By Nidhi Kumari
I am a builder or you could call me a sufferer,
Skyscrapers standing straight
licking the sun and burning my skin.
The pride of constructing the mansions but never owning the same
gets deposited in my arms and elbows and fills my eyes to the brim.
I am a builder or you could call me a wailer.
Once I mixed and buried my dreams of studying abroad
Into the concrete, and lay between the bricks' layers to make school pillars.
Fossils of my desires lying on my face as a plea,
I listen to worried walls whispering "sorry" to me.
I am a builder or you could call me ambitious.
As I put magnificent tiles in the bathroom
Envious neurons from my skull spill out .
The walls which could inhale the smoke of my hot bathe
Are currently yawning at my sleepy eyes.
I am a builder or you could call me bereaved poor.
The fate of poverty famished my toddler to death,
I had neither land nor shroud,
so I buried him in my ceiling and never built a staircase or lawn
at least he could sleep there in the afterlife, without being stepped on .
I am a builder or you could call me a chai lover.
When someone interrogates, where I would go if I were not a builder.
I would go to the roof while sipping tea in a less broken cone ,
With pride, I will praise the towers and tombs I plastered!
And experience the tea washing off the scent of cement from my tongue.
Since I am a builder and nothing more,
They asked me to do latticework for more ventilation.
The pore and wire laughing, mocking my suffocation.
Like the arches and domes of a building cursed to be in discomfort pose,
Not even for once they can open their arms and breathe with their nose.
I am a builder behaving like an observer.
Building the monuments where destroyed remnants sighs,
Be it a temple, hotel, school or brothel.
All are graveyards of wildlife !
A burial ground where a breastfeeding sparrow, a fatherly python, and a mobile dandelion were admitted alive.
I am a builder and now you can call me a sinner.
I built less and buried more.
I certainly saved seeds of memories locked in my attic .
You may ask, Why in the attic?
because attic lacks a ground to bury my emotions.
I am a builder who lived in the dilemma of inquiries!
From scratching the paint off my blouse to stitching the injuries on my sleeves,
Questioning God for building stomach so high and hunger even higher!
Why has God not built stairs between them?
Maybe he too has buried something. Up there.
I am a builder and have never been a child.
Who drew a hut, a river from the sides, mountains at the back
And the sun-like yoke of albumin possessing a life !
I was afraid, how could I draw a backdoor of the hut for me?
And What if the entry door never lets me flee?