Ladies Only
I am pressed between
bodies, mostly bigger
and taller and less
fashionable, but yet,
they all possess some
real heft. The push and
pull of a train charting
the same course every
day, the curve as it crosses
from Gurgaon, to Delhi,
to actually Delhi, the way
we all move together,
even in the non-ladies
coaches, where bodies
shouldn’t touch, but
inevitably, we are all
one mass, baby birds in a
tree trunk, waiting to
fly into fresh air. She
nudges me, in this
sea of shoulders only,
I can’t even turn to
see her face, but I hear
her, the whisper near
my cheek, excuse me,
a breathless pause,
you look beautiful,
delivered so softly,
the compliment lingers
in our lower airspace.
The men around us,
bodies on bodies,
too far to hear her
kindness, or to see
the blush I offer back.
Even flirting in the
Delhi metro is segregated:
my smile, ladies only.
Love Keeps Finding Me
Love, unable to fit through
the window I left cracked open,
takes up residence on my front porch.
I shimmy past it in the morning,
we exchange awkward hello’s. I avoid
looking into its earnest eyes, don’t
hold its outstretched hands.
Can’t the anvil of domesticity
hit someone else? My skull, still
bent from the last round, the crack
of your goodbye, echoing through
my bedroom walls. I can’t love
again, not yet. Can’t steal joy from
a new body, not the way I grabbed it
from your hand. When I knew you, I ate
greedily. Slurped up all you had
and then ran outside. Clumps of dirt
I clambered over, beetles that scattered,
ants that persisted, I met them all.
When it rained, all the parts of you
I thought were mine reassembled like
a soldier’s gun. I could never keep you.
I knew that then, but I was looking
for something to steal. Your strawberry legs,
the tart taste of spring. Although I can’t
relive you, my love, I think of you often,
knocking on my door, saying hello,
staying for dinner.
Anisha Drall is from Gurgaon, but currently writes and lives in Singapore. She graduated from Yale-NUS College and her work has previously appeared in RockPaperPoem, Economic & Political Weekly, and Ghost City Press, among others. You can find her on Instagram @anishadrall.