The Moon Is My Locker Room
The moon is my locker room, where I have kept my dreams safe. Safe from the clutches of the stygian night that growls at my desires every day! The day my dreams were sabotaged, the moon fell to the ground. Wounded and bleeding. I sewed its wounds with my poems. Poems on desires and longing. That night the moon slept beside me and we shared our dreams and longings for hours. In the morning she left with a heavy heart. Her wounds were treated but her heart kept bleeding. In her tears, I could see her unfulfilled desires and complaints against the world that taunted her for the patches on her body. Little did they understand that these little imperfections sum up to perfection. In her waning, I found my reflection. The next night she was up in the sky's bosom again. Ready to subdue the world in her silver hue. From the moon, I learned a lesson; to keep shining even on our darkest days. To rest for a while and return with renewed vigour. For, every cloud has a silver lining!
Sevdah
The creaking of the ceiling fan at dawn, my head, astir with memories amidst the broken sleep pattern. Beating the cymbal of nostalgia with mallets of yesteryears I wake up to the diurnal rhythm battering on the membrane of this humdrum life. Across the ghat, the morning arati begins. Humming a melodious aubade. I open the matchbox to light the oven of desires. They shine bright with the dawn's carmine hue! While I engage in a parley with the rising sun about its journey to the horizon's flip side. Last evening Its rays carried a genome of hope which helped me heal my loneliness. "You are hysterically beautiful", he had said once! "Hysteria and beauty never go hand in hand", I had replied. The time of our togetherness was an ephemera. Short-lived like the shooting star. But it defined my fundamental axiom of existence. The sky's bosom lacerated with an azure hue as the day took over. Memories of our inane banters tried hard to scour my wounds that peeped through the crevices of my senility. I spilled ink on origami paper and crafted our salad days into a poetic craft. The noon basked in chartreuse hues of the untrimmed garden. I packed my mysticism in a garbage bag Ready to dispose of it the next morning, Preserving the matrix of longing within the prism of time. I poured ‘sevdah’ into a porcelain mug and sipped it with my evening tea as the sun again went on its journey to the horizon's flip side where life was perhaps better and youth never faded.
An Archive of Longing
I long to meet you on a spring evening when dreams bleed back into the city's ruptured veins. While we gather the moonlight scattered in smithereens. When the rusted end of the highway bridge smiles in accord with the rains and the rainbow shines through our skins. I long to meet you when wilderness peeps through the veneer of nostalgia. I long to meet you when a mystic magic reverberates through thin air as your fingers like a magic wand run through my hair. I long to meet you on a summer evening under the shade of the plum tree. Where we shall speak of our dreams and share our fears without any fear! Our hearts resounding with the dulcet of the wind, will scribble a new note. Where the clouds will melt with our hearts and the dandelions will smile at our renditions. I long to meet you in autumn's flamboyance when the season's golden hue will render an incandescent vibrance to our youth. I long to meet you on a winter morning When the mist on the leaves sparkles like our iridescent crystalline chimera. When the footprints on the snow scribble whimsical winter tales While we bury our frosty hands inside furry fantasies. Till then, I shall keep safe my archive of longing wrapped within my dreamy ignis fatuus.
Hailing from Kolkata, Debarati Sen is an Administrative Assistant by profession and a poet by passion. She has published two solo poetry collections, features in more than ten anthologies, and in prestigious websites and magazines like The Antonym, Yugen Quest Review, The Kolkata Arts, Lapis Lazuli, The Madras Courier, The Sindh Courier, The Piker Press, Chakkar, Kabitalive, to name a few. She has been invited by Samyukta Poetry and Women Empowered Poetry to read her poems. She is also an independent researcher on Disability Studies and has published National and International articles on the same.
Recipient of the Tagore Award 2022 and the Sylvia Plath Women’s Literary Award, Debarati finds emancipation in her poetry! She has also been the winner of the International Poetry Writing competition held by the Elite Book Awards in November 2021, 2022. Debarati features in the Council Year Book launched on the occasion of Women’s Day 2022 by Literoma in association with the Public Safety and Security Council of Bengal. She is one of the top ten poets of the Women’s Day poetry contest organised by Delhi Poetry Slam. She has recently received the ‘WE Women of Letters’ acknowledgement for her exceptional poetic contribution to Yugen Quest Review and has also been long listed in WE Gifted Poet Award. She has been chosen among the Top 5 Finalists of the ‘Most Eloquent Writer of the Year Award’ at the BTB Wordsmiths of the Year 2022 Award
Yugen Quest Review 