Error*Rest

We, mother, love carrying things and people
The kitchen’s crockery field often enchants us
bowls, bowls, bowls;
samosa fillings, dosa batter, grated coconut,
peanut chutney, thekera fish, kakrol pur, ghost chillies for eromba,

mashed vegetables for the toothless baby,
pizza and something Chinese for the teens,
ethnic-desi-nonethnic-Assamese-Bengali-Manipuri-spicy-nonspicy-sugar-no
sugar-salty-fermented-nonfermented-near the table-food next to the table-on the
able-on the bed for the dancing child-swaying spoons, rubbing necks, food on
the mat for the young-on the balcony for the smokers-on the couch for the tv
lovers-for those eating with phone- without phone.

Silent! Silences!
All shushhhhh!
We cannot say!
“Ok”, “Two minutes”, “Five minutes” is all we say.
And vehemently ask
in our heads: our grandmothers could, our mothers could, so we should?

There…
our daughters with clip-on nails, gossip,
scrunchies tied to their wrists, resting and laughing.

We look at them,
their songs;
sweat cuts our skin, desecrated by
petticoats, white cartographers.
the knife
f
a
l
l
s,
we remember: rest is such a lovely thing!

So it has come to this –

insomnia at 3:15 am,
the clock tolling its engine
like a frog following
a sundial yet having an electric
seizure at the quarter hour.

The business of words keeps me awake.
I am drinking cocoa,
the warm brown mama.

I would like a simple life,
all night I am laying poems away in a long box.

It is my feeling box,
my layaway plan,
my coffin.

All night dark wings
flap in my heart.
Each an ambition bird,

eating grief like meenakari
mistaken for seed.

I have renamed everything in the house.
The vase is shelf, the shelf is spoon, the spoon is cup.
Oftentimes, I cry good, I do not need a reason.
I cry like I drink the extra milk before expiry.

The flowers wither in a day or two,
I change the water and overthink about the roses that die too early.
Roses I do not want to be roses.

All my aches are offshoots of my mind,
I wish it couldn’t walk or fly or talk.
Like mustard seeds in hot oil, I splutter everywhere.
Whirl around the house with an ektara,
and sing of homely things, objects, old trunks,
notebooks and brass utensils
that keep me!