do they ask for a return or do they ask for nothing in return?
in the attempt of throwing some words in air that boomerang off it and fall, all in one place, we associate geographies with lattice, palette with skewers, mannerisms with history, homes with the plentiful
and thus starts this complaint—
these culprits were found loitering
without destabilizing the place i brought them up
chikankari, tunde, tehzeeb, gareebkhana
these words represent something overworked not inside my house because i could not translate the dense lives in this city years ago
how modest, how supernatural, how urgent their labour to the cursed world-building,
like most small cities are thought of doing some pronounce it a craft, a character, an aroma
some go as far as adab, shaaistagii i know the colloquialisms most i became close with were in the feminization possible a thread that went overboard prematurely and plucked out all hair and those new eyebrows of revelation showed up with a distasteful foreboding to face the bust opposite my put-on-face
mother didn’t say anything but then she does not demand honest answers out of people and now i am hanging onto plain morals, bare-faced, the dummies’ embrace but a father, as a father, always available to occupy the titular role, took a look at several looks at me, one everyday and i looked down at people till he died
sometimes, even now, after the hallucination is over,
i think of mean things nothing as paranoid as framing the deceased more like tolerating the days capacity to atone
these tall tales, touched by the sovereign’s sword
their anonymous lungs overfilled with valour,
described the cut for generations to come
made popular by the converts, the herders, the clusters like the mountain goat on wilderness terrain, its scale waiting for specialised hooves to anchor the dream
it is determined to not slip loose its footing forget its name
it hypersexualizes traits that have in time known they are genetic the incarnate
mission of these fathers, they exist to direct illusions
they have said i imagine, that all stories are built in their own corners they don’t mingle
it is one way to ration divorce a town
if there is anything that a lone forging beats into shape more than a saga, more than counterfeit heredity, more than coherence
it’s purity
it can never be sickly, it’s the neophyte’s preface
the emergence of the last word.
with that last word came the practice of exclusion. it erased the neurosis of a disappearance into myself
never hungered for mutton, didn’t long for muslin, didn’t squint at a recipe they didn’t appear
the smothering is trying to reach out for a dialect of its kind sab khairiyat se hai lekin?
thinking that an undoing wants a proficiency, a rapport it will most definitely mangle amaa yaar shayad se nahi?
what is in my mother’s tongue?
paanin nai hai, paanch baje kahin aa jana hai,
nahane jayit hai, band kar diyo jaaye.
the water hits the bucket to drown her out, i open my ears.
her words sound like they are reclining
to find one meagre letter
to finish with, they
eat their aftermaths
miss their distance
they are fledgling,
spoken privately
slipping out publicly
haggling with the innermost,
and the outer edge
they don’t strike, drift, gush
how they separate clauses
remove subjects from her words
leave all these actions without
a breathing impulse
nothing to show of supple influences,
nasalised vowels, generous consonants
urdu-misri, lexicons of allyship
yet, it cannot help itself from speaking
yet, it cannot imprint
it is the cold-shoulder of lakhnawiyat
it has been called an eastern dialect, the ambit
a clampdown, shifting over to one rustic side as my mother bathes unheard.
Prahi Rajput lives in Lucknow. Their work has appeared or is upcoming in Muse India, Roi Faineant Press, Voidspace Zine, Aze Journal.