Ritual
the thing I look forward to as I step foot in my house, keys in the deadbolt,
laptop bag weighing down my right shoulder, to unshackle my brassiere
hook, strap, cup, flesh, anguish, guilt, identity, let the stored burnout
of all the women before me splatter on my cold tiles, let it wallow in
grime till it is only mine that I must ferry, let the hymns of
my parnani churn my bloodstream, let my nani’s dried
melon seeds infertile me, simply no burden to endure
our maiden duties, let my mummy’s anxiety take
root in the embroidery of her silk saree, my
baby sister & me, possibly then anxiety-free,
let this ritual be a havan, where I ghee
the bangles & the bras, the keys &
the kohls, the lipsticks & the
letters, & burn them to
memories, just like
my dead, hereon,
let me be my own priest.
Bus Stand
Behind the bus stand
at 100 Feet, Indiranagar, a horde
of retired men gargle Udupi’s
extra sweet tea(s). Glass cups held
between their frail fingers as they
yak about what old men yak about. They
squander noons & dusks on the steel bench
in their brown pants paired with
pale, tattered shirts—unsaid uniforms
for the old. I cross by them six days
a week. In my sticky workout leggings &
Jockey tees that just about
veil my thighs. At 4:45 PM
I am ogled & gazed & gawked at
by old men with hot tea
in their loose mouths. I do not
call the helpline. I am too late to
start a scene. On my way home
at 6 pm, they sit there like they
have always been sitting there. Like
the end of time. Like they know there
will always be more cups of tea &
always more women to gaze at.
& like always, no one will
ever start a scene.
missing
so often, my poems go missing. yesterday,
I flung an elegy to my parentified
self while dusting the coffee table. the poor
thing now stands wobbly, tilted to the right
by the weight of a loss it doesn’t understand,
soon, the first stanza of a free
verse vanished with a sonorous sneeze. followed by
another big blow. that piece about my mother’s many moles
survived a millisecond. like her love
for herself. & in scrubbing the dishes,
vim erased the greasy tankas I almost
birthed. my pruney fingers left staring
at a clean sink & an empty page. ones that
ached the most, though, were miscarried
in my sleep. some sank into the blackholes
of the mattress, others vacuumed
in a dream. each morning, I wake up
bleeding, bloated with grief—
I mourn my missing fetuses—
baby poems I could have mothered,
metaphors I could have nursed.
Aakanksha Ahuja poems to maintain her nervous system balance. The remnants of her depression don’t help. Until recently, she was a poetry reader for The Bombay Literary Magazine. Her work has appeared in Pena Lit Mag, In PlainSpeak, and Verse of Silence.