Some Poems are Born in Bookshops

She sizes the book in her palm,
Cross-hatched with stress and fate,
The matching of length and breadth,
The joy of finding same-ness.

The page opens,
Page One being page 157,
Scrawled in designer's pen,
A single word screaming
In the middle.

CHEATING


It says
With the triumph of type
With the victory of "yes!"
To returning eyes
That look for same-ness
In familiar flavours
Of sadness.


FLINCH


It makes her shift
From her painful leg,
A pain she has pushed
To the back of her head.


This is how people return
This is how people embrace
Madness of biblichor
Seeping from their mute bedrooms
Into pages drawn by strangers


Who have been cheated,
Who have cheated,
Cheaters cheating their way out
And in,
In the hope


They will be saved.


(Copyright : Sunanda Pati,
Image credit : Freeimages.com)