Contemporary Literary Review India | eISSN 2394-6075 | Vol 4, No 4: CLRI November 2017

Trisha Ghosal

Inside a jar at the bottom of a sea

am I still listening for signs of vitality

am I laying my ear carefully against my heart

or is my head rolling against the wood

making a picture of gentle obviation

that drifts as on a still-born wave

in a monotonic motion

of just two frames?

As the imagination gets coarser and more personal

as it gives away more than is fashionably disquieting

am I losing your interest?

am I losing your attention?

Must I use more metaphor

Show more detachment

Should I sound more distant

And act more resolvent?

there is a romantic code to this,

a process crafted to produce

just the right side of beauty

to ever so cleverly tug at the chord of your undoing

but only in suggestion, only in passing.

so I am constructing this trail

to appear without emotion

to be without hope or longing,

appear beyond affection.

i am leaving you a story,

parts of my broken apparatus

or is it a theory

to foil my determined overflowing

need for you?

an explanation for the insincerity in your guilt

for the self-pity in your sadness

and in the doubt lingering in everything you feel

everyone is bound to notice

after all.