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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
My Love,
The sky reminded me of you today.
The sun set in lilac with a teasing tinge of pink—
just the way you used to love it.
On other days, the sky is yellow and murky,
reeking of sulphur and carbon;
I feel suffocated in grandma’s old penthouse
(I sold off our homes the day after your funeral;
they had too much of my mother and you
in our footprints on the marble floors
and coffee mugs containing our midnight musings).
Twenty years ago, it used still used to smell like her—
the turmeric paste she used to put on her visage every Sunday,
and the pumpkin plants she used to cultivate in the backyard.
That yard is desolate now:
the trees are bones of wood that split the firmament into asymmetric parts—
I look for you in them;
sometimes I think you twinkle between the oak branch and magnolia branch—
you used to love playing in their treehouses
other times, I think you are amalgamated with the soils,
holding onto the roots of these towering creatures.
Will you hold onto them?
I fear they will collapse in a year or two,
taking away with them the memories of my childhood.
New folks have moved into our neighbourhood,
the neighbours keep changing
and I am exhausted from remembering new names;
I know no more than their countenances.
They reek of youth—
their voices, clothes, laughter and scuffles.
I miss the days I used to be like them:
carefree, spreading my wings across a cerulean firmament
like I had no destiny
only flying and flying to my heart’s delight.
Even then, I knew I had no destiny
but what felt liberating then feels caging now.
The sky is yellow and murky
every evening when I drink my tea,
I look at the branches segregate it
into parts of myself I’ve lost over the years.
My wings are worn thin
and I think I’ve forgotten how to fly
(I stopped trying the day after your funeral).
I know not how many years I have
till the only home I can claim is my own body,
frail, bony, deteriorated and discarded.
Perhaps, the sky will offer me homage
even under its yellows and sulphurous smokes.
But today, the sky is lilac and pink
bringing you home to me.
Tell my mother and father that I love them
and Aunt Daisy that I read her remnant letters even now.
Today, the sky is lilac and pink,
and I can feel a blanket of warmth dissolving my loneliness.
I hope I can mend my wings again;
I’ll fly home to you.
Yours lovingly,
Mom.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
We were taught
that to be qu**r
means to be strange,
to be unlike the rest,
to be different,
but not in a way that would raise surprised brows
or taint eyes green with jealousy.
We were taught
that to be qu**r
means to be different
in a way that would produce uneasy “oh”s
or disapproving “how could that be”s.
To be qu**r was
a rising sea of loneliness drowning us
but later it became comforting furry blankets
we’d pull up to the tips of our heads at night—
there was safety in keeping our lips shushed.
You call it hiding in the closet
we call it an embroiling conflict with ourselves
of loving and hating,
of pretending to be not so different,
of letting your homophobic jokes slide,
of knowing that we’re silent because we’re also afraid to hear the truth—
that we’re also sometimes disconcerted by this part of ourselves,
for that’s just the way we do it.
We learn, over time,
as we find out that that kid in our Chemistry class
likes painting his nails,
and that girl in our neighbourhood
scribbles hearts over the Cara Delevingne posters on her bedroom wall,
we learn that maybe
we’re not so different.
We teach ourselves
to give to ourselves
the love we want to give to people who make our hearts flutter,
to accept ourselves
the way want to be by our mothers and fathers,
to embrace ourselves
the way we embraced that friend who came out to us.
We teach ourselves to take off the blanket and sleep in the open instead.
We teach ourselves to keep swimming and swimming no matter how ferocious the currents grow.
We teach ourselves to love all the seven hues in our skies
and to let go of the people who don’t find rainbows beautiful.
We teach ourselves to battle the ridicule and dismissals and bullying,
to no more despise the way our hearts beat.
We teach ourselves to no more pretend to be ’normal’
for we already are normal.
We no longer subdue our voices to the pits of our anxious stomachs
Instead, we sing in a chorus of the hues in our skies,
for we are here
and we are qu**r
and that’s just the way we do it.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
I’ve fallen in love multiple times.
and I’ll fall in love again.
When the stranger plodding around the terrace,
woolgathering much like me
below a sky that dipped itself in a teasing pink,
cast a smile at me,
her eyes glimmering against the infant light of the moon,
and waved,
I fell in love.
When the soaring rises of brick and cement,
towering gloriously beneath a velvet coat,
painted amorously in ochre, gold and auburn
like autumn leaves that crackle under my boots,
stood there gorgeously amidst the wails of vehicles
embellished by the whooshing wind of an unknown sea,
I fell in love.
When a child of four walked up to me,
with expectant eyes twinkling on a suffered visage,
his feet so tiny that they more hopped than walked,
his clothes tattered and ragged against a skin
testimony to endurance and resilience,
with hope for light in the folded hollow of his palms--
which light kindled in the bliss that his face beamed when
we shared a champ together--
I fell in love.
when I hooked on earrings embroidered with pink
simply because I love pink on me,
worshipped my neck with a silver chain
that complemented its subtleties with delicacy yet passion;
then painted my lips in a hue near maroon
just because I liked the way maroon made me feel confident,
and sat on a stool on the desolate balcony,
a cup in one hand smelling of caffeine,
a pen in another,
scribbling in the air till it found
words worthy enough to describe this
me
you
us
I fell in love again.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
It is June again.
It is a June after our June when my mind is not preoccupied by bigger concerns:
friends, college, which show should I binge?
It is a June since our June when my heart is not in a desperate attempt to heal your wounds with someone else’s kisses.
It is a June when I’m learning to acknowledge you,
To tell myself that you were a part of my life I cannot erase.
No matter how many photos I delete,
Or how many poems I try to forget,
Or how many times I respond to your efforts to come in again with silence,
I cannot let you break into my home
not again. not again. never again.
No matter how much I resist,
I cannot remove part of me
And hope to live as a fraction.
It is a June three years later
And my room still reeks of memories of us.
I don’t need photos;
Your deep brown eyes and ochre skin is fresh under my eyelids
I don’t need voice notes;
Your laughter and flirtation from our hours-lasting conversations still echo in my ears.
This is not a poem of love.
It is only non-rhyming sentences placed against each other
To accept that I am not who I am
Without our June.
There will be many Junes after and many before
permanently engraved into my calendars.
But no June can ever be like ours
And every succeeding one will remind me of
the June of 2019.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
Sometimes my heart floats along the clouds
drowning in rains and frightened by thunderstorms.
Like wet spells of storm strewn over a youthful summer,
it dwells in a slump, awaiting the sun.
These times when my heart beats a little slower
and my soul is disillusioned from home
I find home, in bits and pieces,
in the black coffee sliding down my throat, refreshingly,
like the first drop of water quenching a prolonged thirst.
I find home, in bits and pieces,
in known streets below my balcony—
I glare at every evening—
bustling with life of unknown figures
walking, smiling, scurrying, laughing,
fuelling curiosity in me to chase new tales.
I find home, in bits and pieces,
in the way my favourite singer’s voice
swims into my ear as a calm wave closes over the shore,
tranquillising me from head to toe
like a mother’s lullabies soothing an infant’s wails.
I find home, in bits and pieces,
in the teaspoons of care Ma mixes in the glass of chocolate milk
she makes me drink every night for a sound slumber.
I find it in the way words curved in ink
understand me more than I ever could.
I find home, whole and complete,
in the way these things
liberate me from the fright of thunderstorms;
in the way they
make me
the girl I often lose touch of
but find again
in the heart that choruses with the sky
and the soul that lives in the sun’s light.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
all this while
I had been knocking at your door
waiting for you to traverse the space
from your locked room to the door front
take the keys from the door side table
and let me in
and all this while
in being the knocker
I forgot to lock my home
the doors were wide ajar
the windows un-hatched,
you’d raided all of it.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
I.
they say
there exist languages without words
without syllables yet pronounced,
like the sharp clatter of fork and spoon and knife against each other
at dinners in our family.
a vase shattered to the floor last night
at an hour way past our bedtime.
sister and i know that only one room in the house is embellished with a vase
on the first floor with a vase
of red roses—
ravishing over the edge;
laden with sinister thorns under—
but we’re vigilant not to cast a glance at mom or dad.
just stare down at your food
and gulp down the curry of guilt and fright.
a vase shattered but we choose not to clean the floor.
the broken fragments of glass aren’t ours to sort.
instead, we slice the whetted tension with the clatter
of fork and spoon and knife.
II.
there exist languages without words
without alphabets yet comprehensible,
like the silence we were doused in
at dinner two weeks after granny vacated the premises
of the little room on the ground floor with baby pink walls and a turmeric aroma.
no clatter this time.
from my peripheral vision, i espy a tear trickle down mom’s cheek.
we sham it’s a raindrop lingering on her visage from the doleful stroll she took an hour back.
sister and i look at each other every time the spoon visits our mouths.
with furrowed eyebrows,
we gulp down the curry of remorse and despair.
dad’s eyes glare into zilch lifelessly
like granny’s face lying on the soft pillow in her turmeric room
before i had to ring up mom and break the news in words
after which words evaporated;
gulped down, refrained, pushed away.
bite in your tears because unlike the sky,
we were taught to sway our storms.
III.
in our household
there are no syllables, no alphabets, no words.
they say there exist languages without words
and ours is silence.
we could scream or lament or weep.
but instead, we gulp it down
in silence.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
i spot a shooting star
you spot it too
and for the first time
we are glaring at different skies.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
I love the waves
I love the sun diving in their womb
I love its reflection glistening in crests and troughs
I love the firmament painted in hues no hand can ever match
I love how they come to me
how they weep with me
laugh with me
and listen to me.
And I, them.
Today I am naked under this sky
And amidst these waves
There is something so beautiful
About this vulnerability
Touching that of hundreds before me
And that of hundreds who are to arrive—
Those who saw and will see this sky
In hues I can never imagine;
Those who listened and will listen
To trebles out of my ear.
There is something so beautiful
About how despite our skies never meeting
We meet here today
Bathing ourselves away in these waves
Under this sky
Naked
And unfiltered.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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Ruchika Bhuyan Poem
I want to lock up all doors
Hatch up all windows
Pull down the drapes
And sit aimlessly on the couch.
I’d rather dwell without company
If company only wreaks havoc in my house.
I’m tired of cleaning up the remnants,
The broken glasses and stained sheets,
From wine
or tears
or blood,
I cannot tell anymore.
I’d rather not let the sunlight in
If it must only burn me.
I’d rather not let the wind blow in
If it must only choke me.
If I can stand without falling in a locked-up home
Then let me be
Alone. Alone. Alone.
Copyright © Ruchika Bhuyan | Year Posted 2022
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