Contributor: Adreyo Sen


Last night, I dreamt that the world had your eyes
and thus wherever I went,
I lived in their beautiful mystery,
shaded by the absolution of your smile.

Today, when I woke
to myself and the quiet indifference
of those who pass me by
in the grey corridors in which I live,
I thought I would cry.

But I knew I'd rather have
all to myself
the loving loveliness of your eyes.
Your eyes always were mine.
And seeing the world with your eyes,
I knew to delight.


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Adreyo Sen is pursuing his MFA at Southampton College.

Contributor: Adreyo Sen


When this house no longer is,
its garden will still persist,
freed from walls that sought
to imprison its mysteries.
In the shade of weeping trees,
wild roses and wine-red leaves
will charm the sky to pliancy,
serenaded by an admiring breeze.

And long after I've confided my thoughts
to its silent paths
and joined the fox stilled to prayer
by stone's gentle artistry,
long after I am a little less
than the longing with which I leave this place,
you'll wander the kingdom
that was yours
even before you conquered it and me,
and I abdicated with a kiss.

And perhaps those who pause
to look beyond the crumbling walls
shot through with the honeysuckle's
reckless heraldry,
overcome by a sense of awe,
will wander in.

And perhaps, as on a restless, heartsick day, I have,
they'll come across a little child,
unsmiling in her purpose
as she caresses the wandering tulips
that pay homage to her quiet wisdom,
or sits on a granite throne
in severe conversation with the ravens,
tempering her admonitions with soft pats
and the beginnings of a smile.
Perhaps they'll come across you
as you give the setting sun
something of your strange beauty,
the sweet music of your melancholy.
Or they'll discover you touring your empire,
the wild cat that was your first friend,
sharing in the fierceness of your isolation,
sauntering by your side.

Perhaps.
But I will no longer be.
I am readying to leave, to take up exile
in the company of my grief,
though the soft embrace of the rain
and the softer caresses of the sun
will remind me of you.

I cannot bear to stay so close
when I cannot claim
your warmth for my own,
or annex you with my kisses.
I knew you were not mine for long.
Did it have to be so soon?


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Adreyo Sen is pursuing his MFA at Southampton College.

Contributor: Adreyo Sen

- -
She stands still on russet fields
and her beauty
is her sadness.
Hard won is the tenderness in her eyes.

Perhaps the fields are hers,
perhaps she only knows them
and is at pause
in her loving labor.

In her print dress, she could be ensconced
in the elegance of a sofa,
or kneeling by the hearth that warms
its surrounding damp.
In either case would children run to her,
seeking the slender lap
that is the joy of dreamless night.

In fact, so still,
it is a child she is remembering,
a child who
in the brash brightness of her youth
ran laughing through summer fields
as if they could never end.

That child's joy
is the woman's grief.


- - -
Adreyo Sen is pursuing her MFA at Southampton College.

Contributor: Adreyo Sen

- -
Some people look so small and frail
that you begin to imagine
if you touched them,
they would easily break
and fall away.
Disappearing as if they never were.

You are the singularity
at the corner of our vision.
On dragging parties,
the lone, aloof elegance.

You are already a dwindling disappearance.
Would you take fright and become a ghost
if we conversed?
Or would the delicious silence
of your graceful shoulders
become ours?


- - -

Contributor: Adreyo Sen


Mothers were intended
to illustrate
with strange awesomeness
the power of worry
to contort
the human experience
into strange and terrifying
forms.

But mothers proved very good
at comforting away worries too,
from their little ones.
Other little ones too.

A case perhaps
of intent over design?
Or perhaps,
intelligent design?


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Adreyo Sen, based in Kolkata, hopes to become a full-time writer. She did her undergraduate work in English and her postgraduate work in English and Sociology. Adreyo has been published in Danse Macabre and Kritya.

Contributor: Adreyo Sen


Beautiful women forever
in motion
must stay forever
in motion.

Beautiful women forever
in motion
must not stand still
and certainly not long enough
to let the wrinkles of laughter
recede
from their beautiful faces.

There is such a thing
as being too beautiful.


- - -
Adreyo Sen, based in Kolkata, hopes to become a full-time writer. She did her undergraduate work in English and her postgraduate work in English and Sociology. Adreyo has been published in Danse Macabre and Kritya.

Contributor: Adreyo Sen


Families are their own
historians
and record keepers.

But their records are haphazard.
Not the oral ones.
Those are immaculate.

Some of the history books
are grey-haired
and some of the history books
have forgotten their past,
but most family records
are tiny and small,
with odd noses and an
alarming tendency
to accelerate.

Yesterday, Jo displayed,
not finding her favourite
teddy bear,
and suspecting Rita of taking it,
the genesis of her Nana’s
famous tantrums.

Her rage was short, but like Gran da,
extremely loud,
there was the same slight,
fiercely fought,
quaver to her voice.
She fought back her tears
the same way.
She admonished us with a tiny replica
of his finger.

Jo joined us two years
after her Gran da died.
This was Gran da’s revenge.
To record himself in a child
so horrifically self-willed,
so little interested
in who her Nana had been,
in who we were.

But Jo was still blessed,
unlike her poor Gran da,
who moped for hours after
one of his famous and all-too
frequent fits, stricken at the thought
he could have hurt someone.

(He never did.
Nana’s temper was part
of his worrying sweetness.)

Madam Jo, on the other hand,
collects her teddy bear and her
diaries, favours a cousin
with calm patronizing,
climbs into her lap
and falls asleep.


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Adreyo Sen, based in Kolkata, hopes to become a full-time writer. She did her undergraduate work in English and her postgraduate work in English and Sociology. Adreyo has been published in Danse Macabre and Kritya.