Contemporary Literary Review India | Print ISSN 2250-3366 | Online ISSN 2394-6075 | Impact Factor 8.1458 | Vol. 11, No. 1: CLRI February 2024

Ashmita Biswas

Words –

I look for them

Every second-minute-hour-day-night.

I keep looking for them,

In the seamlessly shut mouth of yours,

In those dark empty pupils that stare back at me in the mirror,

In the nonsense I hear every passing day.

Words –

I wish I had enough of them;

I wish I had enough of them to rule over every pauper and prince,

To interrupt the flow of time and space,

To bend the will of nature,

To reverse the laws of physics,

To make poetry out of organic chemistry,

To make a song out of science

No Newtonian law can harmonize.

Words –

I live in them,

Or,

Perhaps they live in me –

Thing is,

We live in each other.

Isn’t it nice?

The only thing to have in abundance in the world

Is the thing that means nothing and everything,

All at once.

Words –

I plan to make a life out of them

Build bridges on its meanings

To bond and to break and begin all over again

With words

Words that I look for

Every second-minute-hour-day and night

And I shall find them and they shall be mine to use and abuse –

But never the right ones.

ashmita