Within Melodies of Reluctance by Aritrika Chowdhury

The sun broke the rules of winter,

Creeped inside gallantly with a promise of elopement.

The Beatles on the radio transcended to whisper 

Notes of hope directing to the street running forward.

Residents of localities; posh and dingy,

Violent and drowsy,

Noisy and leafy,

Bustling and dusty,

Reached me with sing-song like greetings in school

To tell stories of seduction.

Of a woman, charmed by a house so old and burnt;

Of a man, lost in a chic neighbourhood of one-storey houses.

Of their cries, silent.

Of unsent letters, by the squeaking windows.

Of scattered sleeping pills, deserted on afterthought.

Of spilled rum putting off a lover’s scent.

Of aroma of instant noodles, awaiting the remote control to finish its work.

Of lives mundane, shrieks wasted in pillows.

I drifted off with dreams that they meet at a crossroad.

The morning after couldn’t see the sun, distant behind the winter fog.

The song had turned stale, pages of diary ruined by coffee.

Like a Plath poem, I craved a resurrection.

Cigarettes abandoned halfway had put a mat ablaze;

The light, still feeble and incapable was put off with reluctance.

Like an empty bell jar placed by the rusty grills;

I stared at people pass by, devoid of any story,

Not an onlooker to amass the hours to weave one.

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Aritrika Chowdhury is a student at Jadavpur University pursuing a Master’s in Economics. At 21, she is struggling to come to terms with adulthood. To her poetry is a refuge. Apart from overthinking everything, she believes that the utility of buying novels is greater than the utility of buying clothes and hence forgets the calculations of money in a bookstore. She lives in the city of Kolkata, India.