Laceration by Bhairavi Ponkshe

Absence of Sound by STACY DAGUIAR

Ask my name and I’ll utter a thousand words
that only sound like it.

“Do what is necessary,” they say
like necessity
is what brings me to you.
Like necessity
is what brings me here.
You say a person is either a question
or an answer,
But haven’t we used up all the question marks
we possibly could?
Defining ourselves in questions, when
they hoped for an answer.

I draw every syllable of my name on the ground,
asking you to utter each one as I erase it.
You get stuck in between
and now I’m torn apart.
I’m half ground and half you.
Who are we now?
You pluck a bougainvillaea and leave it
over my half-erased name.
Grieving / the shrine of me
that could have been.
Vulnerability indeed makes you
a bad lover.

“Do what is necessary,” they say
So I shred my skin over the ground,
The half-won battle of lost identities.
And pray, pray, pray
A thousand eyelids
for you to crawl under.
For questions,
that sound like my name, and answers
that sound like yours.
I live,
Like it’s a necessity and not a
deliberate choice to mourn.
Embossed,
under three and a half eyelids
You lacerate my heart
And I spill.
My presence,
a nexus between two absences.
But tell me,
Will you contain me now?

Bhairavi Ponkshe

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