• Decay (1/3) •
I have something to tell you,
But it has been twenty Summers
Without a Sun here;
The burn on my skin is the Rust
of old words that are Scorching now -
This decay, none can explain, for
It has been twenty Summers of
Me not knowing how to speak.

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The Heart Remembers (1/2)

I keep going back to the time when
shelter meant a stranger's heart -
not quite, but just about that,
when I kept storing sounds of
your laughter and, sometimes,
prolonged silence;
I thought they would keep me company
on days when greetings couldn't have
travelled the distance between obvious
yearnings and the quiet pride.

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• To-Not-Do List •

Today, at
I. 6 AM: I will not wait for new seasons to dust me off from a fall; reminders of grotesque soil stamps are unnecessary.
II. 8 AM: I will not unfasten my band-aids, over and over, to check how the wound is doing; miracles demand more privacy than I do and work longer shifts than they let on.
III. 10 AM: I will not shove off a word that only arrived to show me the tiara stuck inside my body, right above my heart; there is a red kingdom that needs ruling at the earliest.
IV. 12 PM: I will not doubt the presence of enclosed treasure or label it fallacy; this has been pending for a tremendous while.
V. 2 PM: I will not stare longingly at who I used to be; I am right here, with rebirths, renewed skin and a thousand short stories; I wouldn't stay the same, listen before I leave.
VI. 4 PM: I will not measure the shades of grasses to see which one is greener; I can spell lime now as impeccably as I have spelled moss for myself, we are here for variety.
VII. 6 PM: I will not lose the smell of towering coconut trees that the breeze brought in, that is as close as I can be to the sky at the time; I'll be led to dreams before the wind changes course.

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• The Composition of Solitude •

Every time war hits home,
I look into the mirror;
I see a human shaped moon,
downpouring, in parts, from my eyes,
announcing alliance in a strange singsong voice,
moving closer, as its shadow widens,
towards where I stand.

The moonbeam and I are close-knit,
escorting each other to promises,
we have made our pact to hum diverse
tunes of peacetime anthems for every wartime slogan.

When war hits home,
I count on the chivalry of a companion
I only see in my reflection -
when my face runs into its own image,
when eyes are painted out of self-apology,
when I become planets - the farther, the more immaculate;
I am Saturn today, ringed around with guards -
I may look bound, but what do you
know about liberation in disguise?

~ Nipunya Panda

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• Muted Disclosure •

In winter rains,
you seek eyes congruent with yours
that are bloated reservoirs of loss and longing,
that, when superimposed on you,
conincide with identical fears,
that also taste like saffron paradise,
like mellow sunlight, like gifted overalls,
like remembrance of a routine holiday in the snow,
like a sigh after a hundred years
of crooning of the same address,
like your name dipped in so much restraint
that you are meant to not hear
when called out.

Humans are too afraid to profess,
to see that writing an anthology on disguised worship
is like standing on quicksand,
waiting to have all traces of themselves wiped,
and still chasing the scent of lanes that lead to it,
still resurrecting with new skin a thousand times,
ready to be bruised again, silently,
still awaiting, tight lipped, for the rains
to arrive and carry fresh verses to a familiar doorstep.

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• Semantics (3/3) •

\I am home\ -

I am clutching umbrellas while under a blanket,
I have been asked to beware of
heedless clouds that gather to
sing recitals of drought and never rain,
to beware of what I lose my sleep over,
of what fills my hope balloons that are
ready to be released into the sky anytime now;
they say I am about to realise that flight
is a rare fortune,
that petrichor is a freed slave, now a wizard,
which metamorphoses into gravity
when our feet start to leave the ground, skyward.

~ Nipunya Panda

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• Semantics (2/3) •

\I slept well\ -

Dysphoria is a hidden word that seeks no attention,
or, it would sound like desperation,
like, in my unbecoming, I am more a sea than human,
crashing from a high wave at the
shoreline before every midnight,
when the night is still bright,
like yearning to be burnt out fast, so,
long slumbers feel deserved, owned,
like hands tired of writing about
resentments under the titles of fiction.

~ Nipunya Panda

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• Semantics (1/3) •

\I've been breathing abundantly\ -

Monsoon is being inhaled,
thunderstorm, exhaled;
this is a tale of awaiting a return,
summarised in a sentence.
The seasons here connote the journey
of the wind, decoupled from an aged dry
leaf that it had carried for days;
to breathe in is to reminisce,
to breathe out is to stare at the
cloud entranceways left open in anticipation.

~ Nipunya Panda

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• Entering into the Exit •

I am contemplating if yet another account I lived
deserves to be put on exhibition,
my words again climb upstairs at the rear end of the same
staircase that I use to descend downwards -
we have been existing in a parallel continuation,
playing a game of joy and sorrow in a mirror world;
on one side, I imagine the splendor of survival,
on the other side, I am uprooting majestic trees of downfall.

I am looking back at the constellations of hope
I composed until I could be here today -
my light and shade have two separate lives to conquer;
I could be seen standing on fear-turned-glory,
but my floor, turned upside down, is your ceiling -
your questions on how I ended
are my answers for why I began;
my exposure all this while has been memory's only shelter -
I have allowed melancholia with the same ease as I forbade delight,
a hundred times over,
but word's arrival here was always for its sweet departure;
my goodbyes will be woven on soft breeze tonight,
call it the final show of farewell,
and the stubborn phrases might come back rushing into the future.

~ Nipunya Panda

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• Acrostic // Irrfan Khan •

I woke up to plagiarism, among other things - a chunk of my heart stolen without regrets,
Resurrection was second - an idea plaguing vacuum hearts - we believe in magic but neither deaths, nor ends,
"Rise and shine" stopped meaning anything from where I stood, but
Far worse than most things about this day is this poem -
A desperate attempt at capturing alarming times that lost good people;
'Nowhere' is a place, after all, staring at all of us with a stopwatch.

Knights often have too many definitions, I discovered, but injured
Hands that know compassion, regardless,
Are the ones we had left stacked between us;
Nightmarishly disintegrating now, into a thousand white feathers to touch the clouds, unannounced, unfazed.

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