Non-peace

I

Words by words,

we come out.

The world is heavy

with the weight of wounds.

The assembly of ‘me too’

a floodgate of ‘it happened’

Who are we speaking to?

You? you, unlistening, nothing.

Hey? yes, you

Does the shadow of what you do,

never meet the soul of you?

II

The door opens,

closes, a creak.

Faraway, a howl —

winter night’s

acoustics of loneliness.

In nightmares

I hear his mother tongue

of fear break out of his throat

Mother in many tongues

must be the language of love

and a cry!

Language is memory,

he grinds his teeth in sleep

when loss erupts,

of words he could never use with me

We in love

have lost each our tongue

We interpret each to each

mountains and childhood

and watered down jokes

because the punchline

is untranslatable.

III

Women, migrants everywhere.

Whose homeland should

you defend?

You drown deep in others’ voice.

Sacrosanct means nothing,

though its smell reminds

you of burnt out scents.

How does it taste — the

venom poured on you?

You are responsible,

for the lost rainbow

of a new land.

Look at the mirror, you

have no reflection.

Ahh, what you see there,

that face, is not yours.

Look at the mirror, hate

what you see, it is not you.

Look up, your cosmos are

dead things, dead stars

pretending aglitter.

You,

Step out,

Annihilate.

Soibam Haripriya’s poems appear in the anthology Centrepiece: New Writing and Art from Northeast India, published by Zubaan

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