Relationship Poem by Dr. Baishali Bhaumik Mitra

Sometimes,
in the night
you kindle a sun ray
with blazing bright hue
and by morning
there will be insipid, grey ashes
strewn and scattered all around.

At times, you will weave
a patchwork cloth
hemming pieces
myriad and intense.
You will Join lose ends,
smoothing rough edges
wrapping weft, tying broken threads.
Yet forlornly the knot and the loop
would keep jutting out.

Every so often, you wonder,
whom do you call your soul mate?
Someone who is
holding your hand
sharing your joy and sorrow
or the one who keeps drizzling
in your memory incessantly,
effortlessly with a humming sound
like a continuous falling rain?

Now and then, you will continue
because it is an easy pattern,
a habit, to keep trying
to draw lines and
urging them to meet
either in a circle or in a square;
yet they will keep running
parallel with certain moments
that would be stuck
in your throat like a fish bone
or would be a thorn wedged
below your finger nail
smooth from outside but
hurting each time
brushed against.

Occasionally, you will
nourish and nurture
a green plant
in your garden.
One fine morning
you decide to cut it;
for it will not bear flowers or fruits,
it will not grow into a tree.
Yet you get surprised
while cutting,
for its roots have spread
all over and all around!

At times, it will be like
a favorite painting
on your wall
ever bright and ever prominent.
So much so that after a while
when you would wish to remove it,
a square-like impression
on the wall will remain
undying, like an
unchanging nimbus.