The morning I finally made up my mind and put my adjectives out for sale, the adverbs felt restless and so did the pronouns and articles of definitive. I obliged, and put them all outside, stacking them with care, remembering their birth-cries and their exploits, fondly, wishful that they would be of some use to someone else now.
I felt weightless in my bones, and observed a lift in my words as if the corridors of my thoughts were being fanned by the wingtips of migratory geese. Thoughts flowed, uninterrupted by the worry of an evocative metaphor or the glitz of a super-saturated imagery. Notes danced in and out of the measures, free of rhythm but full of their being. There was a plunder of happiness in this state of un-understanding, and I was gleefully choking on it.
Back at the kitchen counter past midday, as the winter sun started to lose its steam, I felt a little shiver in the skin of my sentences. To warm myself up, I ladled a bowlful of that lament stew that had been on simmer for a while now, but the tongue missed the salt and the pepper of an argument. A little panic started to spread through me like a wildfire. I strode quickly to the bedroom where on the memory foamed mattress the poems and promises lay bare, without the comforting cushions of the unreasonable and the warmth of my hand plucked duvet.
I darted for the door now to salvage what was left of the sale.
Suvarup Saha is an engineer by profession and inquisitive by nature. He has been exploring creative writing in various forms: from travelogues, reviews, and creative non-fiction to short fiction and poetry. Suvarup reads (but not as much as he would like to), feasting on books that his partner curates and stacks in their overflowing bookshelves. He loves language; the smell of words and the ache they create when arranged just right. Suvarup also enjoys traveling to places where people speak in a different tongue. His responsibilities in this world keep shifting but currently includes fixing breakfast and doing math with his twelve-year-old son. Suvarup tries to listen and finds meaning both in noise and silence.
So happy to see this get published.
ReplyDeleteThank you 😊
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