Jharna Choudhury (Colours of Love and Barriers)

Jharna Choudhury

Jharna Choudhury, is a poet-embroiderer from Guwahati, Assam, India. Follow her creative writings and publications at https://linktr.ee/Jharna_Choudhury. 

Hypervigilance

Ears big as the fridge door

flap open and close in hunger,

and eyes eat roadside cats with streets and houses.

Heartbeats are hummingbirds

on a tree that I am, tremors and silences.

What if love was not fear, and love walked

with flowers and kisses,

leaning on the cafe wall, watching the beautiful world go to work

and at the end of the day sit on the edge of the bed

to watch a waterfall that her pleated skirt made in the drop,

and touch and touch her words

as they do in a garden, hand pollinate

for ripeness.

What if my ears shrunk, eyes rested,

and love was everything but a restless dog under a car

with noises wanting to kill.

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Colours of Love :: Setu, July 2022

Poetry: Jharna Choudhury

Jharna Choudhury

Thoughts are no sweet milk.

 

The other day 

I went walking and stuffed three pebbles in my pocket 

and it turns out they were two,

the third one was air.

 

Another day I do not know

how I ended up with the wrong pin number in an envelope,

rang wrong phone numbers, missed my room number,

lost my car number and I assumed I am not good with numbers 

or wrong was too wrong for me; 

but then when

somebody asked me my address 

I remembered a road and a house 

and that's it,

that’s all I have for today, close the curtains I said.

 

Next day, somebody said hi in a cafe,

late afternoon,

that somebody offered me coffee, 

hot cold yellow black brown milk,

I said “just coffeee”.

I did not mean an extra e. 

“Hi, your name?”

I said Mi-li and left.

 

Outside a house, by the road,

a door opened to a bell.

A lady rushed to me, saying

“Darling Ju”, and hugged me so hard

that my mind whirled back thinking

there was no pebble, but a bird,

its bones crushed in my net pocket;

 

and I didn't know what to do with its tongue

curled out to me like a pointy feeling,

 

but to emboss in words.

***

 

Jharna Choudhury is an embroidery artist and storyteller from Guwahati, Assam, India. Her creative writings have been featured in the Muse India, The Little Journal of Northeast India, Spillwords, a collection titled Unsent Letters: From the South Asian Diaspora (2021), and forthcoming in four anthologies of poetry and memoir. 

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Setu, April 2021 :: Icebergs in the Mind: Memory, Dream and Desire