Ink And Echoes

• F O R T Y O N E •

Hey mumma.
To say the truth, we have a love - hate relationship. I love it when you say me how much you want me to have a good job, take you to London. I love it when you braid my hair. I love it when you say me eat oranges because it has vitamin C. But, you have painted the kitchen walls a vicious black, the knives covered with your blood. You say me that, I have changed; something like a dead body under the soils of London. But I think you didn't see the roses on me.

Your skin was like honey, and earrings were like blue copper. But you've been blinded by the temple fires, calling me something that I have seen in red rooms. I think, you've stitched me with fear but I still loved you. You were a woman of unwritten poetries, like a moon in a black sea. But your mother said that you'll need a man of cigarette smoke, dislocating his life everyday. Everytime you hold me, I can feel the cracks in your hands caused by washing Papa's ashtrays and satin sheets.

To say the truth, we have a broken relationship. I've bled rusted iron hoping you'll sew me together. But you weren't a bandage. Rather a cage, a relapse who said the that she wanted to save me from drowning to the neighborhood. A tsunami of black ichor in the food you served me for dinner. You've counted my failures, saying that I too deserve the wounds you've received. But maybe, you were the one who watered my roses. I have crafted myself into closed libraries, afraid everytime you and papa fought.

To say the truth, we have a relationship of war. I wear an armour of ink, lipsticks. But your armour has been stolen. You lay naked on the marble floor, sinking your nails into the gasoline. And maybe that's why you wanted to avenge yourself. But I think my armour is just another ridiculous metaphor.

Hey mumma.
You've tied ropes around my neck more than you've tied yourself to wounds. But I am a knife, wild and cynical. I'll let myself go free. But if I'll try to help you, you'll make me blunt.

~Sampurna