What even?
you say nobody thinks about anybody else but themselves
i don't agree like i have learnt to i tell you about otters who
never leave their beloved's hands while asleep or mothers
who hold their children with such aching intensity sometimes
they call themselves noose sometimes the anchor there is
no sheer selflessness in this world but my father still walks the dog before everyone wakes up prepares the breakfast and
asks us to eat sometimes like a request mostly like a plain
old statement a weightless act of faith you say people are
never thinking twice about your mistakes neither your memories
but i still think about the girl who wanted to write a book before
she wanted to kill herself or the lady in my hostel who asked me
if i had breakfast after not eating for three days or that distant brother who gave away my clothes without my knowing because nothing fit me anymore because weight of medicines has accumulated in my bones what doesn't tell you that everything matters even that cousin who compared me to a dead body even that friend who leaves breadcrumbs of love at my door before disappearing like a cat with its kill before wandering away in streets even that relative who forgot my name because i wasn't what success looked like you see nothing is coincidence
not the look on your lover's face not the sunflowers that brought you good belief in yourself not the made up god that listened finally not the bee that once stung your foot only a knife healed it
don't you feel this world is not stabilized by its axis but its tilt towards sun that whatever you feel is noticed even the light falling slantly on your shoulders
Language of a small-town woman
what language does to a woman from small town
is same as what language does to elitist women
they say something and I believe it
big-town women, language-under-their-tongue women
you will see me through the lens of rich women
pretending to be allies, but rolling their r's in savarna women
not all women though, but women, of all castes
all kinds who know something about English that I don't
capitalized word for "your grammar is wrong" women
i own a job, you must be small women
big parties, growing doctors, raging scientists,
i just can't walk with you women
you are so minuscule, i don't even see you women
you fall ill, but die before you blame us women
so when you laughed at me for my bad face, worse english
for my ugly depression, acne cheeks, grey hoodie
and ill-fitting pants, falling, oiled hair,
you point at them women, tell me they are looking at me
for how you dressed women
selena gomze and not selena gomez
you from good schools, and i, just a villager
learning to say selena as saleena, you smirk
ask me to order tacos, i fumble you laugh again women
i, a sad woman, you pretty in your sadness women
i don't point at your ugly, but you do women
language fermenting on your lips women
standing tall, shoulder to shoulder with people from your class
unlike us women
crouched back, heads bowed down
gravity works wonders on our bodies
tell me, tell me, your trash secrets, your sullen letters
let me mock it, you petty woman
I fight for women but only some women
not you though, you don't match the aesthetics of my clothes women
so what if we are the same blood of fighter women
so what if our women years back learnt the traces of letters on a wooden cardboard
so what if witches were burnt because they had a mole, women
so what if you believe us women, us villager women, are so soft
even a finger on us can turn into compass for weak women
you wear good clothes, we just clothes, women
evolution, you say
branching into women of all kinds
but ours is at a distance away,
you don't introduce us, your fathers don't take our names
but "ye ladki"
women, you shout at us, because you own a status
the i don’t care women, mistaking rudeness for this is who i am women
language in your face women, such growth, such sad growth
whatever you surpass, is just litter women
“and i cried...for all of the women
who stretched their bodies for civilizations
only to find ruins”
of women who couldn't speak much.
My father doesn't watch Taarak Mehta ka Ulta Chashma anymore
Home is a man is the entire house
my father's gurgling laughter,
i see god in it
rare, sacred, we all worship it
mother, the most
but daughters on mother's footsteps
learn to witness his laughter as a memorial to good times
father doesn't watch taarak mehta ka ulta chashma
anymore
the entire walls of house are silent
is my mother's hope at the face of our life
is how it mends and bends and tricks us into
praying god
father
doesn't laugh much, his eyes
sullen like first winter snow
someone must have felt the warmth before his eyes,
he now scrolls through old YouTube shorts
and videos that make no sense sometimes
he bursts into laughter, the old crumbling kind
before it excuses itself midway
and lingers inside the throat until it dissipates
into empty air, leaving trails of memory of laughter
his voice now so slow, he mumbles and witnesses himself
through the mirror of his voice, hungry
are lives almost at the peak of a sad sad house
watch how it has emerged into a temple
nobody sits here, but the lonely god
empty alley, a tree covered with fairy lights and moon
hung just low enough for it to catch the sight of
our house is a man
who has known life so closely
that he ended up becoming it,
father, my beautiful beautiful father doesn't watch
taarak mehta ka ulta chashmah anymore
we all know what lack of smile does to a person
we all know fathers who turn into children
who turn into their fathers
nobody returns home
our voices match the pitch of an old park's swings
some of us speak
and wind rustles around our bodies
all this rusty time, after all these years
all we have known is bluntness of time
sliding off our backs, slowly like
a tv show left on, our home, this double storied,
cracked walls, blue around, giggling at storms
knows a laughing god
is my father sometimes.
Credit: "I cried for all the women...' is adapted from Sonia Sanchez's 'I cried for all the women....only to find ruins.'"
About the Poet:
Bharti lives in Himachal Pradesh. Her striking poems speak of home and heart, while she herself stays quietly behind her words. Find her understated presence at @useless_thought25 on Instagram