New | Poetry | Channdika Thayver

I Sleep in a Box

I sleep in a box.

It is made of pine

Because Neem trees

And Kadambas

Do not grow here.

My arms crossed,

I relish the peace of this

Snug,

Dark space.

Even so,

I can feel the heat

Of their disdain

As they hoist this box

Onto their shoulders,

These white, beige and brown men.

I hear the hate

In the spit

That captains their words.

One loathes me

For being a Distraction,

Another is disgusted

That I am Brown.

The third detests me

For having an opinion

And the fourth scorns me

For not wanting him at all.

Their tongues grow

Twisted

As they spew their revulsion

For me,

Knotting themselves into

One

Another

Until finally,

They trip over themselves,

Throwing this box

That they were

Never.

Asked.

To carry.

In the first place.

I fall out

Landing

On my elbows.

I bleed.

The dirt smells like Life.

I roll over

To remember the sky

And realise:

I would rather drink

The salt-water

Stored

In the wells

Of my body

For all of my days

Than to ever close

My eyes

Again.

Scent

You smell like the Wild.

Minty Fresh and Forest Green

Clean, like a wind-swept sky;

Fresh like an Autumn morning,

Light rays of sun

Grazing across my lips,

Goosebumps on my flesh,

These clothes, a thin sheet

Against my skin

And your scent:

Tantalising.

May I bathe in you?

Drown my bare back

Against your naked chest

So that I too

Can smell like you:

Tree bark

In a cold wood

Under a blue sky

Rough,

In all the right ways.

May I brand myself

With your breath

So that I may never need

Air

Again?

Empty

I can’t hear anymore

Because I’ve listened for too long

And too hard

To the daggers flung from the tip of your tongue,

Spears that grow claws when they land

In the void they have made;

Searing pain

In the centre of what’s left

Of anything that has ever mattered.

I cut out the burnt flesh,

And squeeze out its poison

Before I throw it against the wall

To watch

As stars and galaxies drip from what’s left

Of what could have been.

There is nothing left here.

Safe

I swallow the words I should speak

And the resentment burns.

It is tar

Thick and Hot

Sticky and Dark.

It congeals in my throat

And hardens to stone.

A concrete mountain,

Cemented in my veins.

There is no life here anymore.

The birds do not sing

And the flowers do not grow.

I close my eyes yet again

But this time,

I give in to the silence.

Perhaps it is best

To amalgamate

With this dark matter

For there is safety

In the Shadows.

Beware the Moonlight Prince

I’m one of the lucky ones.

The albino monkey that escaped.

The one that burns brown in the sun

Instead of black

Like the babies that the other babies,

I remember,

Would sit far away from

For fear that the soot would rub off on them

And dirty their freshly laundered skin.

“Mummy and Daddy said black was bad,”

Claimed the echo,

And this was not new to us,

We who are painted by holy scripture

To be the stunted, monkey people of the Deep South,

Useful to a prince and his moonlight skin

Only for paving the way to retrieve his stolen wife

The way one might retrieve a stolen bike;

A wife he un-trusted to remain un-raped.

Do you remember,

My stunted,

Monkey people

Of the Deep South,

When we lived in a valley

Where streets and avenues intersected like a grid?

And water stopped and ran as easily as we as we willed it?

Where we planted the sweetest smelling flowers

Along our sewer routes?

We were playing when they came.

With our toys, by our gardens

On our grid patterned streets.

They arrived on their horses,

Carrying their weapons

Baffled that life could exist

Without ownership,

Without one

Demanding to control another.

The story fades here.

Did we leave because they arrived?

Or did the shifting waters

Ask us to follow?

Perhaps we were stuck

Between their weapons

And our Goddess of the water

And we preferred to follow Life

Instead of succumb to Death?

They say we’re the same

But they made it clear a long time ago,

These princes with their moonlight skin,

That we are only good for

Kissing their soiled feet

With the sweat of our self-worth.

“God loves you

But your dark skin keeps you far from him.

You’ll get closer, through servitude, one lifetime at a time.”

And we believed each Moonlight Prince.

We forgot our grid-system streets,

We forgot our running water and our sweet smelling flowers,

We forgot our men who married our women

With blood oaths,

Swearing to serve the Matriarch

With gratitude

For carrying his memory

Into an endless future.

We believed each Moonlight Prince

Who said he kept our Goddess caged

To protect her.

We believed each Moonlight Prince

Who said he protected her

Because he revered her,

As long as she too was made of moonlight;

As long as she too glowed

No more than gold.

We have taught our children to believe him.

And so, our children,

They now worship beauty

As the Moonlight Queen

Who glows no more than gold.

Tell me, where, between the spectrum

Of moonlight,

And gold

Does my child of the night sky belong?

We believed the Moonlight Prince for so long,

And so deeply

That when his Master came for his head

We too bowed and gave him ours.

Our heads continue to roll,

Unsure of the crevice in which we will wedge ourselves.

Perhaps when we find some stillness,

We will one day look down and see ourselves

Reflected as the star-filled skies that we are.

 Dear Cis-Het Man

If only my vulva didn’t live in my heart so often.

Perhaps it wouldn’t bleed so much

When your body tells me

That you can’t love me

The way I need to be loved.

If only my clitoris didn’t hover so often

In the space between my lips.

Perhaps it wouldn’t expect your cherry tongue

To titillate

When all your words do

Is circumcise my desires

And watch them drown, gas-lit, in shame.

If only my uterus didn’t swim

Between the pit of my stomach

And the lump in my throat.

Perhaps it wouldn’t smell so acrid

When you try to fill it

With all of your expectations,

Emptying the contents

Of your toxic fragility

Into a tomb that is too barren

To host anymore of what you lack.