Two Prose Poems by Bharti Bansal

 

Mother

Sometimes I look at the regrets of my mother trailing along the corners of her eyes

As she wonders about her place in the world too often

There is no secret to motherhood, I suppose

Just a constant feeling of doing it wrong

 

My father consoles her, calls her beloved

A sincere way of reminding her of their own vows

Yet when she wakes up at night, feeling the clutches of past on her throat, she simply lets him sleep without saying a single word

I believe it is when a relationship turns into partnership as time moves along the edges of their bodies,

Sometimes becoming a game, as they team up together, shake hands, pat each other's back, constantly reminding themselves about the love that blossomed years ago

This is how I see my mother, constantly juggling between motherhood and being a wife

On most of the days, this is all she can offer

 

Yesterday when I read about the case where God was being sued for damaging a man's house, he won it because God couldn't/wouldn't show up in courtroom

I want to do that too,

Charge him with the felony of breaking my mother's hope too soon

Have that kind of justice which nobody speaks about

But it is when I remind myself that faith has no witnesses, and the act of dreaming is still not covered in the law books or what punishment is suffice when they are chased off, like cats when entering the house

My mother seldom prays and when she does, it is the symptom of her surfacing anxiety

Every gurbaani I know is because some days my mother can't remember the difference between faith and repentance

She has shed more tears for what she didn't do and no God has ever tried to tell her otherwise

But then I remind myself this is how prayers work,

To fold hands mean begging in some cultures

 

Last night I dreamt of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly

I could see its little face with dove eyes and tentacles like my mother's embracing arms

Everything reminds me of her

But mostly this poking need to fly away

I see her angry and I see her calm

On the days when she doesn't make a noise, I see her being both

And now when I am old enough to notice that mothers too wake up with sweat on their foreheads, racing heart or dizzy head

It becomes difficult to see her as just a mother and not a grieving woman in her forties, who once dreamt of travelling or buying sarees, have jewels or sit in Ferris wheels

I sometimes forget that mothers too carry their mother's longing, or a young girl's little wish for freedom

 

Sometimes she tells me about the time when I was born, her first child

The mistakes she did, all the awkward ways she held me in her arms,

The stories she told to put me to sleep

Or the secrets she confessed when I couldn't comprehend confession from noise

But time has grown over her body like vines

She wobbles sometimes, cries like a little child

Says words she doesn't mean,

Gets sad over a poem I write

Stops midway and asks me what claustrophobic means

Sometimes I offer her my lap to sleep on

And other days, frustration takes over her as she looks at me

But I suppose this is how motherhood works

You bring a child in this world

And spend the rest of your life convincing yourself that you did the right thing

 

Lessons on cooking

Sometimes we grow up to be women first than daughters

Our hands still young from the nostalgic childhood,

And heart ripe enough to be broken,

Our grandmothers constantly warn us of the homes waiting for us,

Their kitchens empty, like forlorn lovers, waiting to be touched by the hands of a new bride

Our rage buried under the layers of skin,

The first lesson we learn is to be silent.

Mothers talk to us in language of past

Their wishes never excavated, they become the living fossils of rushed growth

Perhaps this is why when my mother tells me how much turmeric is good enough to add colour to the food,

She pauses for a while

Her countenance, a snapshot of fine lines of wrinkled time, folds itself into the size of her red bindi

I believe this is how we mimic our mothers

Layer by layer,

Unravelling our own skin, forming bridges between hearts of each other.

There is always a tussle between all that a daughter could be and what she has to become eventually

And our mothers know it so well

They start conversing through sacrifices.

My mother and me never talk about how we really feel

But when we do find a chance,

We rather reminisce how weather reminds us that rain once meant freedom and not this urgency to take the clothes off the clothesline and rush inside home

My mother sometimes resent how I do not take seriously, this art of cooking food

Says, one day, the house will fall upon my shoulders like lightening striking at a tall tree that  doesn't bend too much in storm

And I laugh

I say, "mother you aren't going anywhere"

She neither agrees nor refutes

I fear she must have imagined a thousand times how to run away from this home

The thing about mothers is they never learn to say that they can choose themselves too without adding the "but's "

Some days, I tell her all the useless facts about the world

How the dust on the windshield of our old santro is nothing but dead stars' remnants

Or if we look at our thumb, millions of neutrinos strike it at a given second

I tell her about gravitational waves and the bend in our space

And that the universe smells like gunpowder or burnt almond cookies

To which she casually replies," perhaps it is the only way God learns to devour things he love;  by burning them around the edges a little too much; it gives them a nice crunch, a proof of how when things end, they leave behind a sound"

She then reminds me how yesterday when I forgot to turn the gas off while boiling the milk,

The smell of burnt milk resided in the hand towels and the utensils

She laughs saying our home was universe too, we were closer to god than today,

And then scolds me for not watching it,

Tells me that the only way to cook good food is to let it simmer slowly, add salt only when the onion turns brown and gives away a shriek when water is added

As she consoles me that it is by practice that I will learn to know the difference between burning and cooking,

She whispers while gazing at the television behind that the only way we women have forgiven the world is by not setting the kitchens on fire.

Bharti Bansal is a 24 year old student from India. Her works have been published in magazines like Aaduna, oc87recoverydiaries.org, the sunflowers collective, two drops of ink, Livewire India, Feminism in India and is forthcoming in the anthology ,”the yearbook of Indian poetry". She lives in a small village surrounded by mountains and find solace in poetry and stars.