I Am Dulled in This Place – This Place Where I Am Dwelling

I Am Dulled in This Place - This Place Where I Am Dwelling
Photograph by @devilbitez on Unsplash

When wasps and grasshoppers occasionally visit my bed sheet,
I treat them with kindness by picking and leaving them outside my door
Buzzing creatures that distract me from gazing at the concrete ceiling too long

I imagine summoning a leaf or two
Asking them how their day has been and how much air they have cleansed?
Is it still remaining – the air?
As a reward, I would soak them in water and expel my breath in homage
Find a way to hug them and bid farewell

Still inside, I will be finding ways to see anything out of the ordinary
Coconut water filled lake
Or Rainbow Lorikeets coming to visit me
A blooming day where I can feel the buzz
Not the clean cut way the golf course always looks or how the flats echo only the
sound of AC’S
Or how the same faces venture out for evening walks

I sit inside dwelling on these
surreal scenarios and building fantastical landscapes
Finding a way to hold onto the daylight and not relive the sick deserted lands of my
nightmares-
Drawing illusions to write about and not narrate the same fiasco of a dying world


Removing the Bad Parts

We make this marmalade together
Take the sticky mess out of our lives
and gather it in a roll
Oh be cautious, use the gloves
You don’t want to get contaminated
So we add salt to our fingers, it makes our hands rough
and pull out the threads that led us to this wrong place,
Scoop out the ungrateful parts,
Cut the pieces that were selfish and mundane
Now we look at the art we made
We look at this fruit we grew among the weeds
We look and we cannot stop looking
Everything still feels the same
Everything looks unchanged
But we have time
and name this goodness organic.


The Clothes that Outlive You

Your old clothes hung outside
fill their sleeves with air
like ghosts personifying a body
They have been swinging outside for the past year,
filling gaps of your afterlife-
Swaying and sighing in the background.
I wait for evening to come and patiently dust off any
foreign object stuck on them
So that when the night comes, they still feel like they used to
when you come to wear them again.
It is easy to describe this moment as ghostly but it is less
lonely to believe that you aren’t here toying around a
chipped t-shirt or tethering through plastic cloth clips;
This presence is just your memories
Hanging and fluttering around, remains of your golden days
while you are out there, let loose
in the sky trying new clothes and making new memories,
using bright clothespins to hold them near you.


Divisha 1

Divisha Chaudhry

21 year old Divisha (preferred pronouns she\her) is currently pursuing BA English (Research) from Shiv Nadar University, India. She prefers writing about unicornland {the not so unusual world} and wondering what her dog thinks about her. Divisha believes in the power of love and is always looking for ways to generate hope through her personal struggles.She associates herself with writings on social conundrum, emotional mayhem and the inner\outer growth of plastic. Her publications include a personal essay that appeared on Livewire.in and upcoming poetry publications in Ecstasy by The Writer Order Publications and Sunday Mornings at the River’s Winter Anthology 2021. Her insta handle is @hallowedoaths

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