Sneha Bhunia: Figures of Thought: Collegiate Voices across Spaces

Jasmines

Tonight, I write to thee, O traveller 

of a time, I cannot envision yet.

How you chanced upon this -

In truth, I do not know ,

but I want to tell you about

my jasmines that grow,

around the rusted bars

of an enthralling cell ,

midst the cries of migrant birds,

blaring televisions and knells.

I don't remember the last time

I felt a touch upon my skin.

Instead, I trace

the braille ghost of a three,

has three years really fled

since life had abandoned me ?

abandoned us all to rot

at the doorsteps of arbitrary fate,

smelling the incense of trepidation

and hope at once, in an eternal wait.

I've grown accustomed to her voice -

the one who inhabits the cell next to mine.

Reminiscing of a time when

giggles and screams together dwelt

before silence deafened us all

in its tyrannical quell,

of our longings of solitude, and now

the sound of my own syllables,

so foreign and distant at times

threatens farewell.

The mustard mornings of May

jeopardizes to torch the world alive.

We quietly curl up next to the wall -

as close as we can be ,

we talk of death and how many

such mornings we will live to see,

before we finally reduce to dust

in the name of a nameless sin,

freed from the fear of being buried alive,

the winds shall bear our coffin.

O patient listener !

take my love and give some to him.

Tell him, I wrote him letters

on dandelion parchments

Even bribed and smuggled

tokens of love in the folds of garments

but they never reached their destination

for no word came to console me otherwise

and though I wept in longing and release,

I never forgot to pray for him each night.

I often wonder why do we bother

to adorn the dead with fragrant flowers ?

But if you insist on numbing sweetness

to the burns of a stinking corpse ,

I still have my jasmines blooming

to perfume my death when I'm gone.

But if tomorrow arrives

and I’m destined to live with these ghosts,

I'll scatter them on the streets

for there isn't a corner that isn't haunted anymore.

***

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Author's Bio:  Sneha Bhunia is a first-year undergraduate student pursuing English Honours from Loreto College, Kolkata. Fascinated by literature even as a child, she aspires to teach and write short stories someday. She spends her leisure drawing and playing the piano, looking upon the world as a stage where we are all stars reciting our infinite tales.

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Setu, June 2021