Semal Petals and the Sufi Skies of Delhi - Poems by Paarmita Vedi

Semal Petals and the Sufi Skies of Delhi

The yellow of the postcards you sent me

Is rusting now and winter is already over.

The words of love on it taste tangy.

In the morning, I saw a floating spring cloud,

Casting a bluish shadow over my clothesline.

And I ask you if you know

You contain the blue skies in you,

Because I am a sufi saint looking above in trance.

Will you braid my hair, like my lost mother,

when I’d fall back on this brown earth,

dizzy and full?

Crying over years and years of meditation

Because god was always dead.

I unwrap years of memories from my skin.

Like how once at 4 a.m., we peeled our souls

And offered each other our raw hearts.

Like how you lovingly slipped my cotton kurta

With red ajrak prints, off my shoulders and back.

Six springs have passed.

You ask me if i don't want to be held

In your arms?

I look at the mole on your left index finger.

And on some forgotten and abandoned old tomb,

in an unknown part of Delhi,

A Semal flower falls sadly.

I am sorry.

I don’t want to go home tonight.

Semal: Silk Cotton Tree

Azrak: a form of textile block-printing

Yellows and Amaltas Flowers

when i think of love, i think of

mustard seeds drying in my courtyard

and i ask you,

can the sun ever be too much?

i’ve seen turmeric stains under ma’s nails,

days and weeks. nurturing faith, faith.

she liked red. but the flush of red

nail paint on her nails was always dirty.

dirty cinnamon.

she didn't mind.

when i was four, i asked my Father once,

can the sun hurt us?

he opened a book for me

to explain the evidence of yes.

sun and orbits and bright yellow.

but ma showed me honeybees.

and sunflowers.

faith is but a dying light. evening. evening.

i get why ma loves sitting in the sun

but can’t she see,

it’s burning the amaltas

that she planted in our garden last winter.

I Envy the Love between the Sun and Marigolds

the sacred bastard-teak in front of our porch

(oh, my porch)

hides opal sunlight deep into its fiery pods.

i hate this public display of affection,

their bright orange-red passion.

alone, i water the gaillardia. my june blooms

and baby pink roses.

won't water them today. i mutter.

i bet the sun is tired of this love.

i find it pretentious.

can i throw it away tangentially

into some outlandish plasmic void?

it fashionably tiptoes to the top of my head.

golden effulgence transfuses into the milky white.

like our morning tea.

deliberate poking of my pain, i know.

i leave my bed. wondering if you left yours.

i hate having this milk tea without you.

and the coffee cheesecake with nut toppings.

the sun tests my patience. belittles my heartache.

i tie down curses around french marigolds' stems.

so it evaporates into our native city's skies.

a city shoved on a sandy bank. three rivers confluence.

the sun swims west and dips down.

i hope my curses evaporate and rain to ruin

the flame of the forest shadowing my porch.

before the sun could say a goodbye.

or maybe i should get used to

a new morning tea. without milk.

without your cheesecakes and you.

When you're smothering someone with

your twisted desire to be saved by them

How do you measure the gap

Between happiness and indifference and fragility?

By munching on ice cubes and swallowing tiny icicles.

The gap between fate and future and stupidity?

Between certainty and uncertainty?

By trying to blindly cross the busy roads

When the frozen night defreezes and spills

in the glow of the green.

And two red trucks approach fast towards you.

Similar to swallowing two whole red cherries

Without chewing and waiting to be choked.

But you see a boy riding his bluish-green bicycle

And you think of his oxford-blue shirt,

Rippled fabric soaked in his cold sweat

sticking on his chest

And his thick, wavy hair whispering to the wind.

But the world melts into sludge on charcoal roads.

What an ugly sight blocking the grand metaphor

which you force him to be for love and life.

Avoiding the trucks, you remain frozen

In some second-storeyed grocery store,

With a sunflower shop hidden down in its basement.

It's a random night and he's picking the grapes.

Fresh and frozen, touched by his hands,

Taken off the fifth shelf in the fruit aisle.

You wish for his warm fingers to stick down

Into the grotesque darkness of your throat,

Triggering your gag reflex,

Releasing the glacial grief choking your windpipe.

What an ugly sight.

You wonder if that boy would keep a watch

When very secretly at 3 am in the night,

Illuminated by the faint glow of the refrigerator,

You'd try to swallow those grocery-picked grapes.

But you also wonder,

Why should he?

Snacking on Love and Having Some Tea

The first time I entered the kitchen space

Was to make my Ma some tea.

This is love.

Come, I'll make you some tea.

Pouring my loneliness into cups,

Offering you a slice of citrus blues years later.

In one life, I'm in the kitchen crying

About a spider I couldn't save from dying

On a hot non-stick pan

In the next life, I'm worshipping gossamer cobwebs

between my faithless fingers.

Do you protect the things you worship?

I protect my grief as I'm scared of letting it loose.

I carry my grief like an astronaut carrying oxygen.

Gravity is the collapsing of things into themselves.

Let your September sorrows sink into my heart.

You see, my sadness is tethered to yours.

It will attract unless we are one whole.

You stretch your arm, and I fall back to earth.

There's life. And there's you.

There's science and then there's faith.

You know what I mean when I ask you to touch me.

When you were six years far from me,

I was an atheist.

My faith is a revered snowflake, a beautiful mole

Resting between the thumb and index finger

Of your left hand.

The hand you use to untie my hair,

Allowing me to melt into the peace of your arms,

Taking up your spaces, your faith, your desires.

The hand you use to pour the milk in

When you serve me a cup of tea.

I see you smile and breathe,

returning from space. On the earth.

In our kitchen.

And I swear at that moment.

I hear and taste God.

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About the Poet:

Paarmita Vedi is a PhD scholar in English Literature at the University of Delhi. She writes poetry to make sense of the world, and sometimes to escape it. Her work, rooted in a deep love for language, has appeared in Eunoia Review, The Literary Yard, The Alipore Post, and a few other lovely corners of the internet.