1. Ashen is the highway of my tongue. Someone ran out of gas and pulled over. Accidentally smudged its pinkness and disappeared into the woods. The aftertaste, caustic. I don’t know how long it will take for my tongue to recover its blandness. 

2. Hell, I didn’t even charge a toll fee. Soot, they say is an acquired taste. When you have passed a certain age, nothing is sweeter than bittersweet.  My tongue is still learning the craft. 

3. A friend fragrant with self-consumption had once asked me. Pick one: One great fulfilling love story for your life or a lot of mediocre, even decent affairs? Before I could answer, the madman passed out drunk. I’m still mad at him because I think he left me a permanent lump in my throat. 

4. I don’t want to move tonight. I want to be a plant, even better a flower. Oblivious to beauty. How otherwise can one practice the virtuosity of ignorance in an age where information and technology scheme to make a love child every night? 

5. I press into the sliding door of my balcony. Willing it to bend and wrap me inside an éclair. Then save me on the windowpane for the morning birds. I would explode inside them. The possibilities two fold. Either, I become a bird. Or they turn human. 

6. I want to be a cinder that’s still keen to burn in love. Even if it is to die from the ordeal. Desperate times call for desperate measures. And is there anything as desperate as the desire to be pitied? 

7. I cried for fun while stuck in a traffic jam yesterday. Because I saw a man peeing on the cracked sidewalk. A thousand cars watching him sprout. Such a pathetic spectacle. But oh, I could kill to be a spirit like that. Free of affectation, a cat without whiskers. Absolved of presence, a god without followers. 

8. I’m the most empathetic and the most narcissistic person I know. Typical human strain. Bones smeared with the blood of duplicity. Flesh baked from oxymoron dough. There, I’ve arrived at a plan for Monday. To rise feeble. Resurrect by noon. Meander through dusk. And retreat to myself by night.

SATYA DASH‘s recent poems have been published or are forthcoming in Passages North, Prelude, The Florida Review, Porridge amongst others. He has dabbled with short fiction in the past and been a cricket commentator too. He spent his early years in Odisha, India and has a degree in electronics from BITS Goa. Now he lives in Bangalore and recites his poetry in the city’s cafes. Twitter Handle – https://twitter.com/satya043