Pritam's Blog
An Almost Made Up Poem
I see you dangling your tiny feet, playing with the water, And it’s a narrow hilly river somewhere in the North East, somewhere I have never been to… You can see the rocky river bed through the clean water, But all I see are your toes, painted all white.
And as you talk to me over the phone, I imagine you lying on your chest, One hand holding the phone against your cheek, The other one playing with your wet hair, Your legs bent backward, Your feet hanging playfully in the air, I imagine your toes painted red, looking like cherries.
I hear you talking about your ex lovers And your son and your daughter who passed away last May. I hear that you are tired and yet I sense a certain kind of romance, romance of eternal hope.
I say that the world is unfair but it doesn’t really help. So I keep quiet most of the times. I sing in between. But I hear you talk about your regrets and unsaid words.
Like the time when your boyfriend said, “Babe, are you ok living in a 1 BHK house?” And you felt like saying, “No, babe. I am not.” But you ended up saying, “It doesn’t matter where I live as long as I live with you.”
Or the time when he asked if you would be ok living with his mother under the same roof, that 1 BHK house. And you felt like saying that you had been living alone for the past 8 years and it would be difficult to live with his mother in a small house with no privacy. But you ended up saying, “I would love to, For I never had a family in the past 8 years.”
There’s no place for your tiny cat though, in that house And that’s why you broke up, And it makes sense. And I realise Bukowski was right, ‘She’s mad but she’s magic, there’s no lie in her fire.’
The characterless poet in me wonders what would have happened if we had met when I was young and you were not tired yet. But then I realise it wouldn’t have made any difference. For a woman in love always does the right thing And the man, with his entitlement, goes bonkers and stupid, And the woman suffers.
It is best like this, You ranting about your past lovers, While I imagining your feet dangling in the air as you talk, Your toes painted red, looking like cherries.