Imprisonment–Her Residence
Crows caw, let their
scissor beaks gnash
the air in anger.
She’s in the kitchen,
living under anklet
spells and the jingle
of her gold bangles
from her to-be-mother-
in-law.
Gas stove hisses,
snarls under the pressure
of the pan, where
her story has to be
written under the
ladle’s base, made
bigger and bigger
into rice pancakes,
edited with Gingelly
oil. It’s complete.
The fumes need to
wander between those
black window bars,
She counts in the
abacus of incarceration.
Something falls on
the green roof, she
looks up, her eyes
can move if not
her body. Crows
have left with
her story chunks.
The gold bangles
seem heavy and
loose on her wrists.
Is it possible to
escape through
this circumference
or is it just
another fatalistic
game chalked out
by Saturn imprints
in astrological
tic-tac-toe boxes?
Nithya Raghavan is pursuing her third year BBA at Heriot-Watt University, Dubai. Her hobbies are reading and writing. Her poems have been published in poemhunter.com, fictionpress.com (pen name: Ghost of words), Muse India, Kritya and Asia Writes. She has also published articles for Nxg and The Hindu, letters to the editor in Khaleej Times and Gulf News, and a column in Khaleej Times.
qarrtsiluni 