Poetry
By Anindya Arif
I often have
dreams of a place
Both familiar and unknown.
Waking me up from this dream
Feels akin to having to give up on
a space I have always
wanted to be in
it is cruel to wake me up
from a dream as such.
While continually
Self-medicating
Through the pain
on over-the-counter placebos,
if I were given
the opportunity
to write my own obituary,
I would do it on
a qwerty keypad,
on my old Nokia C3
in a cross-armed stance.
I keep having this dream
Where I am dying,
the more I see of this dream
Only a couple of miles
within this dream.
The fly buzzing in my ear
Reminds me of the anxiety
my father felt
Every time he heard
a dispatch call.
The white noise
of the memory
Reminds me of how
they are taking down
“The Cartoon Network channel”
and how it's impossible,
(read: improbable),
to go back to the places
and people whose effigies
I burnt four poems ago.
I have begged, pleaded,
Bargained, bartered,
wrangled, acquiesced
it made no difference,
it did not change anything.
My throat filled with
Holier ineloquence
and bottles of mezcal
Did not change anything.
Every situation life
puts me in
I come out a
worse person
on the other
side of it.
The first time I
got everything
I thought I wanted
it felt right
for the first
time ever.
The second time that I did
I realised how I am not
Someone who is alive.
I am too preoccupied
with readying myself
to be billowed
to be vacated
on a circular
shamrock
Staircase that is grief.
The reticence of that
Half-understood
Dream eventually grew
into a chimera
that dismembered me
limb to limb
and left me with
the sehnsucht
and shame of wanting
it all (or some).
On wasted shores
Watching a waning sun
Holding my own hand,
I never ended up
writing about that
Dream where
I was drowning
that I initially
set out to write about.
Or recounting
the story
of a dream
so painless
I can never
take it
for granted.
A dream
that melted
into the sea,
Along with my
Memories of
getting all
that I have
ever wanted.
