Crying in the Women-only Coach and other poems by Isha Kazmi

We have visited a few dying patients together,
Mother and I.
It's now an unspoken agreement between us.
The symptoms are almost always the same
the same preoccupation with times that never existed for us
lingering on to a place these creatures have irrevocably outgrown

you see, what really happens
the fear of death jolts you one day when you're not paying attention
an uninvited guest
an old acquaintance you'd been avoiding for long

and before you know it,
you’re being handed out in numbers
parceled into facts you cannot decipher
diagnosed with insidious flowers creeping up your lungs
your life becomes a cryptic document
tossed around by well-meaning friends, neighbors,
people such as mother and I

We speed past against the sun,
against all we’ve known.
Secretly complacent with ourselves.
Aware that we are very much alive
on this warm September afternoon.

as this one seems ill-equipped for when
my eyes just happen to meet your eyes in a room full of friendly strangers

Where all of your 'how are you's would humbly meet my 'fine'
even after stumbling between all that is worse and better

We must, must create a language of our own
for when your voice dies with a quivering "you know what I mean?"
and a word from my end reaches like a hand in the dark
I do, I do,
I understand all that you mean.

Love is hand-delivered to me
in the heavy weight of a warm blanket
Placed lightly and unassumingly by father

And my heart aches with all the love it cannot contain

Sometimes I go a full month
with just one look of love tossed my way
Believing that the world survives on this-
crumbs of love silently handed out by embarrassed strangers

"I’m moving out holding tombstones in my hands."
- Vacating an Apartment, Agha Shahid Ali

I am moving in
Cradling the infantile hopes of making my time worthwhile

pacifying a 7-month-old electricity bill,
transactions of someone's passing love,
legal certificates tying down a torturous continuum between birth and death.
Most of this life is just accumulating things,
hoarding supermarket receipts you no longer need.

I look around and wonder
why we are forced to occupy so much of space
for this fleeting presence

Austen and Dickens peer from a corner,
Rising from a humble stack of dated existences
Politely begging to be accommodated somewhere

As if marking an evidence of my presence here
In this vacant apartment
In this isolated blue globe
A living proof that I'd been here,
momentarily

That I had once again treasured the receipt
for a full jar of pickles I no longer need.

The night gradually spirals down
into a sudden abyss of revelation
As we lie down, holding our breaths,
both agreeing that it's an exceedingly haunting affair,
This life.

It was only last month, the same time
When a mother next door died

How beautiful it is, how obscene,
at any given second any of us in this room could die

"But mothers aren't supposed to die, are they?
They are to be stationed at our disposal-within a hand's reach
Mothers are meant to live forever.."
The night suddenly springs out on us
Like the ghost of unrequited love
ecstasy envelopes our limbs
until we're held hostage by a paralyzing love
for our lives together

the night is prying
on our last moments of lucidity
before the routine swabs us clear off of tonight's memories
drugged up on caffeine as we would be in the morning,
running into a colleague in the corridor
and bouncing off the "how is it going?" gesture
with a death stare,
exclaiming, in spite of ourselves--
"It’s an exceedingly haunting affair, indeed.
This life".

How beautiful it is, how obscene that at any given second any of us in this room could die