Who owns the metaphor?

Forever blue

Sometimes I wonder: who owns the metaphor?

who has an absolute right over how I see what I see

under star-lit skies? —a kitten’s shiny plaything

around shrines that sleep at night

I can’t write a story when I’m not writing a story

but when am I not writing

about you?

it’s funny how you

shape-shift

how you’re spelled after a vowel

in urdu, after a pause

you break into a subtext

I break into laughter in what Stacy would call

mashriqi english

mine is bad — I am neither mashriqi nor english

neither here nor there

all my suns are drowning

you are psalms to their sadness

you’re pretty in every language

gorgeous in each pause

you are samandar to the sahra

you are your own metaphor: a thousand wishes like this!

you are the daryaa-eyed atlantic —

azraq

aabi

neel

now you are a fishnet

a scale caught in the fishnet

I am writing you a river —

you are forever blue.

Threads

Jaan, i do it for the plot—the ebb and flow of woolen thread

on fabric softer than tilled grounds of gruesome grief—pastel palettes

pink, crimson, gray-blue at sunset, your hands touching mine

and planes touching down on lands we called home—i do it for them

friend calls from bangalore and warns me twice: first, for the story

next, for my life—too risky, too blunt,

a little too much on the edges, you’ll die

of autumn skies, cotton skies,

woolen-threads-falling-loose-from-a-button skies

we are on the edge like a bolt

dangling from the rails out in the porch, like an indecisive driver

hitting the sidewalk

in the middle of the night, like my neighbor’s endless exile —

her soft murmur to a lover under a landless sky,

she paces up and down her kitchen on the other side

of a thin wooden wall separating her grief

and mine, like something gone missing

a tooth or an eye—brutally undone like

enemy property—remnants of a loot

scattered

scathed

forsaken

divine

we are made of threads—you’re stitched into

something i am trying call mine, we are floating in space

unthreading time—jaan, do it for the plot,

write!

Demolition

there is dust in my bones—i can feel it the way

cities feel the touch of metalware digging deep into

alleyways tucked under mud and water, ash

and silt—our homes do not belong to us—their endless

crumbling—turning into soil—brick by brick, tile

after tile—belong to the wind now and to snakes—coiling

in the dark, winding through the night—their mouths

gaping at crooked asbestos, plastic chairs, garlanded gods

on rusty hooks, their endless mercy—tea-stained mats,

worn-out slippers, a bright pink scarf—and more plastic

and more gods empty bottles—sauces & oils—years

of prayers—some money in a bag—how do you hold

a trembling hand sifting dust & debris looking for god?

Eid

breathing in an air so thin that we

could choke—god's last poem to an

untamed ocean—open your palms,

paint them red—take this grief, make

a truce with it—with hands now

trembling as we speak—lovers

are martyrs on another shore—i want

little birds on my palm—fleeting,

fluttering, breaking free, and a henna-

smelling breeze waking you up in a

home where our child, now five, comes

back from school in another life.

Midsummer night’s dream

I am free from guilt now that it’s summer

again, and you’ve learned to tell a Monet from

a Manet, a pollock from cod—I can go now

to a shore bluer than a ceiling fan’s endless

reproach, to towns knitted on my cotton frock from

school, and around them, flowers, with leaves turned upside

down—early Baisakh’s* camphor-smelling breeze—who knew

there’s a way to etch such spirited worlds in the mind

of a child still learning to not bruise her knee on graveled

pavements—mud and debris sticking out of

a junkyard—there’s a theater there, and now, as i speak,

it sways in the wind—reaching out for ruthless,

rainless skies—heat & hyacinths rinse on your shirt—

you can dry them later when the sun is hot; I think of ships

still waiting to be pushed to the sea—I am free to go

where I always thought I’d go—to see those who sing jellyfishes

to sleep—this summer, I’m playing Puck

in their dream.

*Baisakh is the month of spring, marking the beginning of the year in regional calendars in Bengal, Punjab, and other parts of South Asia.

About the Poet:

Rhitama Basak is a doctoral student at the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University, USA. She is from Kolkata, India and is now based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her research focuses on Islam in South Asia. Her literary work has appeared in esteemed journals. Rhitama’s poetry was included in the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English (Pippa Rann, 2024, UK).