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| Titas Biswas |
Self-Love
Self-love came knocking at my door
When I was 22 and 5 heartbreaks richer.
But she was no angel clad in white,
Halo over her head.
Self-love was middle-aged,
All out of breath.
She was bent double with pain,
Slashed across her face.
I dragged her to the bed.
Self-love, she wore tattered khaki pants,
A blood-spattered vest.
She had no wand to make flaws disappear.
No pills for contentment.
I stayed up nights nursing her back to
health.
Self-love bore no trophies or medals.
No badge of honour.
Self-love had lost many fights.
But at least she made it back home.
At least I made her stay.
FISH
Plath's fish has made
its leap.
It swallows me up
whole
And I feel its
struggle
To push my head down
Its oesophagus.
Perhaps I should crawl
My way in.
Let the beast have the
last laugh.
Maybe I want to crawl
My way in.
Save myself from
another day
Where the hours repeat
themselves
And I stare at the
lake
Only to find a
stranger there.
I could crawl my way
in.
But I spread out my
elbows instead.
I spread out my elbows
And jam its gills.
Fairy Lights
I once aspired
To fill your world
with beauty
But by the time I got
there
I found that I was all
out of glitter.
Colours had dried up
in their steel coats
Complaining of unuse.
The brushes were stiff,
The glue bottle sucked
dry.
Sequins had eloped
with Glass Beads.
Holding a blunt pencil
I figured
That art too had
broken up with me
Without a text, a
snapchat story.
I went to sleep,
downing a glass full of regrets,
Two cubes of failure
And a dash of guilt.
The next morning
I opened your closet
and threw
Fairy lights over the
skeletons.
