Sunday Poem By Akashleena Majumdar

Sunlight on My Skin

Sunlight reaches my room
Breathless warm
Through that wooden windows
Crawling in my skin.
I hate to break the romance
With that man
Who was in my bed;
For whose unknown touches
Made me his lover overnight.

Sunshine warmed
This side of my empty bed,
I lay there maybe hours
Cold, blank faced to the sour ceiling,
As people on their deathbed.
My plants bore flowers
Beautiful and delicate as new borns
On their mothers lap,
Free and fragile.

I often stumble upon nostalgic loops
When I sat near the window
And hear to morning ghazals,
On my ten year old radio,
Baba once gifted on my birthday.
I would hear a soft voice,
Of a man, maybe mid aged
Whom I never met
But eagerly waited for him
Every morning.

90’s bollywood in background
Some old albums of Kishore Kumar,
Savouring mangoes from backyard
Or writing my hopeless romantic poems
On some sweet summer afternoons.
Maa would often sing in balcony
And I smiled to her,
While she oils my hair,
Her laughter filling the vandah.

The white noises of my celing fan
Settled the reality,
Sour walls and beautiful flowers
Wounded skin and the oddly silent room.
The sunlight has warmed the bed
Like the summers of childhood
Where I lay down with Maa,
And her singing me lullabies.
Maa, ghosts and demons are crawling
In my room
And you are not around.