All The Pain Poem by Vinita Agrawal

All The Pain

 
My father is lost in the range of time's darkness
and my mother, from all her anger and despair,  
has become dull even in fractal recalls.
Only the rippling air of their impressions
cups their footsteps in my ears.
Trees rest after a storm.

It's not good to know the cave of a stranger's mouth
nor to have strange hands fish out desire from the steeple of my legs
and break the barricades of my bra.
It's not good for my shadow to look lonely
or to think of blood when I think of love.
Can't stay locked in another person's mind.

Humans,  plants and birds are burdens in my veins.
Every time I settle into bed,
I feel a strange sadness seep into my bones.
Pain, like some sections of the night,
becomes a concrete thing.
The thing that shapes me.
 
I want to ignore the wag of bitter recollections.
Be pure...like the old half of myself.
I want to wash away my scars gently
without my snarling grief clogging the gutters of the city.
I want my doors to rise from all the sweet apologies adrift in the world.
Invent a dateless calendar for me.

All I want is an eraser for pain.
A rectangular piece of pristine white
To rub out the nettle-like scribbles beneath closed eyelids
something soft to counter the hardness of memory's shards.
Breaths that expunge the sighs, I want.
And rains that dissolve diss..olve dis..solve the obfuscation of fogs.
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