Poetry: Selections from Ankit Raj

Cavities

An inscrutable joy rushes in

Every time I chance upon

An empty cabinet,

An unused drawer,

Or tight-lipped cavities

Hitherto undiscovered

In rented apartments

I move in from time to time.

 

The sweeter the joy

If the compartment is empty

And struggles before giving in

To endless space

And infinite possibilities

Tamed within tangible boundaries

Erected to ease the insecurity

We hold against voids limitless

And unfathomable.

 

Cavities console us,

Despite our wariness,

For things only dilute;

Empty spaces hold infinity

Within their walls.

 

Cavities are our

Partners in crime,

Where we lead

Secret lives,

Where we tuck

Our truest selves

For safekeeping.

Circle

I am a circle of my own making,

Drawing myself round and round

A centre I have tethered myself to,

A centre that houses

The what-ifs and so-whats

That wound and nurse my pride.

 

I keep waiting for a miracle,

A nudge from without

That’ll free Sisyphus.

Then I’ll be a tangent leaving its locus,

Never to be drawn back

In its godforsaken orbit.

Supposedly Stolen Lives

I often wonder if I could flip

The pages back to the time

Free of constant fretting

Over where I’m headed.

 

And in yearning to restore

What is long gone,

I tend to do stuff I did back then—

Lying with a paperback

And a song on retro radio,

Or strumming a Kishore Kumar melody

‘Till the blues go away—

All vain efforts at recreating

What fate has stolen from me.

 

I have realized lately

In these designs of mine:

If we are so capable

Of taking frequent detours

To our beloved past,

Doing all we could

In the days of our lives

(Days rendered spotless by bias and time),

Aping every memory worth pining for again

(Barring the few beyond resurrection)—

Are we really as wretched

As we pride ourselves in believing?

Ankit Raj is an assistant professor, rock vocalist and former software engineer from Chapra, Bihar, India. He teaches English at Government College Gharaunda, Karnal and is a PhD student at IIT Roorkee. His writing is published/forthcoming in Roi Fainéant Press, The Bitchin' Kitsch, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Routledge and Johns Hopkins University Press among others.