Debasis Mukhopadhyay

That Watching is Harder than to Asphyxiate

[For Quandeel Baloch (Fauzia Azeem), the 26 years old Pakistani model, actress, feminist activist & social media star who was asphyxiated on July 15, 2016 by her own brother for “bringing disrepute to the family’s honor”. Every year, in Pakistan, nearly 1000 women are killed by their close relatives in “honor” cases.]

Found me?
Blue poppies all around my music box.
No blood, no puddle, no songs.
Just my tight skin
that I probably should have owed you with my mouth & nose pinned shut.
I let you watch.
My ocean blue cotton shirt could hardly veil the dark tipped nipples of my two worlds of flesh.
It’s an odd time when you can get out of your mind to say something like this :
it’s a reflection on my status,
if I am now in no relations with ifs & buts.

Found me?
Yes, my mouth still feels dry now.
As if I am in between loves.
How long has it been?
Thirty-six hours?
I have been lying in bed.
Nobody came yet.
Aimlessly transporting my head filled with young coconut water.
It’s an odd time when you can get out of your mind to say something like this :
you didn’t have a chance to stop the blue silhouette of your hands weaving
thousand bracts & clusters of bougainvilleas that would scramble over my bare shoulders with their spiky black tipped thorns.
Later they would tell you :
we all know watching is harder than to asphyxiate a sex kitten.

Found me?
I was asleep & dreaming under my skin
just like a Gul-e-Nargis lashing the sky.
No gravity, no stillness yet no wings.
Just your big paws brother mine.
And your dwarf cock, Risen, puffing out the family pride.
I was dreaming under no imagination but a pillow.
Everything can happen in a dream.
Everything always happens when we are in a dream.
And everything always becomes everything else in a dream.
You ain’t no peacock,
yet were you not a proud one then adorned with ugly claws?
Or did I just hear a peacock’s harsh cry filling the empty bones of life?
And I ain’t no oyster,
just a gauzy slut.
Yet was I not one then squirming & wriggling under lemon?
Come on brother,
smothering an oyster misses the point.
I let you peek in
the deep of my hull where periods & honors got unwritten.