Five Poems by Akankshya Pradhan

THE VACUOUS REASON

The saccharine words of mine,
The curvy figure,
The waves on the waist as it swayed,
And the enchanting gesticulations,
All in vain;
No effect on the tenant,
No roof over the head,
Only the tears filled to the brinks,
Waiting to snake down the eyes
onto the painted cheeks;
Homeless were the days
and the ceaseless nights,
Umbrella was that isolated,
grubby tunnel, the
place I shaded myself,
Through out the monsoon
and the hailstorms;

Soon got one, the one I enmeshed
in the gossamer of my trap,
In the inebriation of my love,
Just only to gratify my needs;
But the play for own-self
mutated into a real story of
endearment,
Got myself enveloped in
the magical world of love and lust,
Hallucinating the distant future,
Into our tomorrow;

That tomorrow morning came,
The same, with the Sun,
With the breath of chill winds,
With the birds chirping on
the arms of a tree,
But no same was the man, I loved;
No rebuke,
No reproach,
No brawl,
With only treachery;
He used me for his delectation,
As I did, once for shelter,
He ditched me owing to the vacuous reason,
That is, I, a trans-person.

 

THE SOLITARY BOY

It’s been an aeon since
he roistered his natal day,
Sans his parents,
Sans any siblings,
Only a flock of hapless
cherubic companions, though oblivious
were some about the bliss
of celebrating the birthday;
The sun in the peep of the day,
He brushed his teeth,
Showered well and
soaped just his face,
Clothing self in a pair
of baggy pants and
a pale shirt with patches
darned, bestowed by charity,
However, a new one
for him;

Geared up was he,
as well as his pals, awaiting
for the couples,
Some with barren womb,
Some avarice for one more child;
He, grinning like a Cheshire cat,
His eyes twinkling,
The eyes which yelled,
“Adopt me, adopt me, please”,
However, they whizzed past
Him;
The dawn turned dusk,
He so solitary in his birthday,
And still bereft
of any new surname,
Bereft of any new parents,
But why?
For he already in his
stage of pubescence,
Or just because
he was too sombre.

 

THE RAY OF LIGHT

A fly buzzed its wings,
Then upon the sappy nose,
And no hand to drive it away,
Not that of his kiths,
Not even his own;
Inert was his bygone body,
Barren was his stagnant life,
Within the same hospice room,
With no ‘ray of hope’;

Stood firm a mammoth window,
In front of his eyes,
The only organ wigwagging;
The abundance of the green,
The chirping of warble birds,
The dawn with jogging couples
in the exquisite lap of the nature;
Grinned his heart
with the pulse of the cabaret
echoing in the late night,
Smiled his eyes
and bosom with pleasure,
with a playful grandfather and grandchild
duo glance, through it,
Through the window,
His ultimate ‘ray of gaiety’;

In the fullness of time, that
ray even choked,
Shut was his opening
to the ravishing world out over there;
Very distressed, glutted with despair,
Snuck a look at the ‘ray of light’,
An angel with a paper in his hand,
A will with the sigh of relief,
To alleviate him from the
sulky hopeless life.

 

THE UNRIPE BRIDE

The moment she menstruates,
The community discerns her,
No longer a little girl,
But a soon-to-be wife
Then an unripe mother;
Her parents alleviating and
relocating their burden,
On to the shoulders
of her husband,
Perceiving, one less to feed,
One less to clothe;

Society of patriarchy invokes,
In the median, to
leave her studies,
leave her merriment,
leave her childhood,
Into the swamp of
duties and responsibilities;

The utter pain of pregnancy,
The twinge of the
loss of her infant,
The lesion and gore
presented by her
abusive and angry husband,
Converts that swamp
into the inferno of
stress and depression;

A child in marriage,
Similitude to the
innocent soul capsized
in the uncanny woods
of grisly nightmares,
With her fate
engraved, to be exploited,
To be nagged,
May be sexually,
May be at the grey cells.

 

CHILD NEGLECT

Her lavish dress had torn, still unstitched,
Undone are her nursery home-works,
With her it was just her nanny during the maladies;
She had only her own finger to wipe
the incessant flow of her eyes,
And none to mop the flow of her nose,
Her food adorned on the magnificent table,
But no mature hands to feed it to her mouth;
The two who beget her hurled the lamp, dashed the portrait,
The mirror smashed to smithereens, the doors bolted,
And soon she out of the picture, into
the gloomy room of depression.