By Subhasree Das
Your eyes were gleaming with conceit
Under the fading fairy lights
That you decorated with careful manipulation
Your Amusement to have the power over me
To say hurtful things and knowing I would be defenceless
By choice
The crease around your lips teased my self-worth
As you casually threw in your judgement
"You have an odd smile
Your crooked teeth show
It makes you harder to love
and I have seen precious and pretty,
More of them these days,
Loving you is becoming harder"
The room turned silent for two seconds
Only the whirring of the ceiling fan
And Rusty yellow from the fairy lights
Tried hard to fill the vacuum, between us
Then it all came crumbled down
Inside my chest as I grasped for some air
The seeds for despising have already been sown
As I ruminate
The chairs in the hall, cupboards, the lonely wine glass in my kitchen
They already recognized the whispers
The Space between us started to expand by then
My eyes were covered with a thin patch of ignorance
Tied with misplaced efforts and selfless love
And you took the opportunity to point out all my shortcomings
That came into existence because of you
You gave them the shape of stars
That somehow slipped your convoluted brain
When you thanked me for being the joy in your dark
And through your trying times
Now, after thousands of milliseconds of accumulated glances
Shared meals and vulnerable confessions later
Me making my way through crowd just to walk beside you
Boiling in scorching heat once your bike broke down
You think my laughter makes the wind heavier around us?
You fool
This laugh brought revolutions
Women throughout history
Created whirls within the cycle of time
Made the world a bit more liveable
With this laughter
They still do
This maddening
Earth-shattering, awe-inspiring laughter
It doesn't appear on carefully curated billboards
You stumble upon it on unruly surface of a road
Sometimes in the mundane of local train
On a random Wednesday afternoon
On the unwavering face of the girl
holding a placard asking for her rights
I wonder
If Sappho ever had to hear that,
Or Rosalind or Lopamudra or
Agnodice in ancient Greece
Or the women I see everyday
Managing everything with their invisible hands
Selecting the shade of lipstick just right
That does not seem too loud in a professional setting
or too muted to not catch anyone’s eye
Setting the tone just right
So, her assertiveness does not get misinterpreted
Into something, anything that will take a form of defiance
The laugh
Your brain is too unequipped to fathom
The depth of it
Makes you uncomfortable to your bones
I ponder
How did I let someone so little to have the power over me
The array of people
That came free with you
Took it upon themselves to judge my body
Like I am some kind of furniture
On display
And you get to choose
The hight, the color, the shape of my nose
Thought it is in their right
And I could not look at the mirror
And find the girl who used to
Gather smiles anymore
I start pressing my lips hard, over my teeth
Till it bled
The hint of red on the white basin
Took the shape of revival
Reminded me of the cheap wine we had
The only bottle I could afford
And I knew at that moment
Why grapes tasted sour
Since your hollow soul came bare
And you saw storm in my eyes
I wish I knew then
I loved a coward man
Or barely one
Projecting boatload of insecurities upon me
Obsessively ramming on the hull
Until my boat sinks
I put my faith on a miserable man
Or barely one
I wiped the trace of blood from my lips
and you, from my fingertips
I went out
Into the dusk
with pressed lips
The plain around me laid there with
the residual darkness from my soul
I looked for the light everywhere
Air around me became heavy
and the rooms I walked into, stuffed
"Light, light, a little more light"
I screamed
Winds whispered into my ears
“Laugh, you silly girl, with all your teeth”
I stood in the middle of the room
And laughed.