Before I Wake
Before I wake,
the crawling dreams learn to sleep.
In the rain shadow of mind,
light becomes a shade of darkness.
Wild flowers dance on graves, unbothered,
and I carry the wreath with thorns, unperturbed.
Grief, bright as a bug zapper,
glows in my room like religion.
The voice inspects the house, then leaves —
noisy breathing, unfinished thoughts.
Only memory remains, pacing.
Border/lands
Seeing the child draw a squiggly chalk line,
I realise that borders are just squiggly lines,
drawn on maps from a hundred years ago.
A hundred years ago was before radio, before phones.
The squiggly lines remain like mountain ranges.
Cutting people into shapes, slices, into teams, into enemies.
The child erases the squiggly line with the back of his hand
and I’m amazed. All borders are dotted lines.
There are gaps that we are trying to squeeze our way into,
And out of, aspiring for a better life, beyond the bottleneck of borders.
Falling with Buoyancy
Where others sail with ease, I strain to stay,
choiceless tides deciding my course.
Hope, once bright, dissolves
in moth-white spray,
a ghost of faith dispersed upon the air.
Like turtles turned, I flail against the ground,
yet learn to fall before I dare to glide.
Wrists clasped close,
lest brittle bones be found;
odd snow-angels mark
where dreams have died.
Still I drop as autumn petals drift,
as fading blooms whose sighs dissolve in frost.
A silent grace, the only final gift,
when sound and shape
in winter’s hush are lost.
If fall I must,
let the end be mild,
as though the earth
embraced her fallen child.
The Ship
Vaishnavi Pusapati is a physician poet nominated for the Touchstone Awards. Her work has appeared in Dreich, Prole, Roanoke Review, Presence, Ink Pantry, Molecule, among others. Her haiku book, Afterlife:haikus, is forthcoming.
You can find more of Vaishnavi’s work here on Ink Pantry.
