Photo by Marvin Meyer on  Unsplash
Poetry

Love and other poems

Love like a plan gone wrong

Today I woke up and decided to be beautiful

Everyday feels like a song in my head

Looking to escape

Words rushing out of mouth

I like the wanting as it comes to me – hurried, unfinished, hesitant

This morning, I smoked another cigarette

Lungs charred, legs splayed open

Your fingers feel like veins popping

Across my forehead

Tracing maps of lands

I’ll only visit in the dreams I forget to remember

 

*

 

Muslim women don’t make love

Garters don’t hug our thighs

Suggestions under our hijabs

I like to get my pussy licked a lot but nobody seems to lick it right

I tell you how your tongue should move

Circular, soft like slow motion autumn leaves turning tricks on the tarmac

My mother taught me to hug frail boys when they sleep

My body turns itself inside out,

I hug myself and I dare let my thumb rest against your crown

 

*

 

You only ever cared about building a life

Brick and mortar, rent paid on time, change your furniture every season

Life was daily domestic chores interrupted by a smoke and a kiss

The girl with the whiter skin, limbs slender and sturdy

Arms wrapped around herself like leaves drooping

Quietly, begging for care

We sleep with our backs turned to each other

Weary;

We’ve run out of fingers to count our moments together

 

*

 

Cold medicine trickling down the back of my throat, you tell me I’m beautiful

On most days, I can’t bear to look in the mirror

Thirty squats, three reps of each

Suck your stomach in, get your push-up bra on,

Line the brows, shimmer at the side of my mouth

Where your tongue barely grazes as it finds its

Landing strip

Pun intended, I swallow up the looks hungrily

So unattractive in my naked need

 


The above poems were first published on Bangalore Review and have been reproduced with permission.