Empty Perfume Bottle Poem by Mushtaque B Barq

Empty perfume bottle

With the first streak of light
she got up and
caught up, for she had nothing to offer
to her class teacher today:
" Why mother's give birth to teachers",
her blunt voice slipped
between two fractured roses
recently robbed
by winter chill

pushed that half broken window
to let the breeze inspire
her little mind
for her ‘poverty' once again
was ready to humiliate her in the class,
where robes and roses
never fade, where if at all
fades, fades poverty

nothing around save
the over stitched shirt of her father
and tattered blouse of her pregnant mother
with hungry drawers
and wide open mouth cavities of boxes
broken glass bangles in that magic box
she mistook once for all
had its lid broken like her own bony cage

her father last year
had taken his father
in the field along the secrets
to the fire
where he by chance had uncovered
an empty perfume bottle,
black in colour packed with mud

it was again a day to surrender
the choicest thing around
last year she had nothing to offer
but now ………..
black empty perfume bottle
she wrapped gently
and offered to her teacher

next morning overloaded with grief
she on the back bench
cast a glance at her teacher,
her eyes were wet
but in her teacher's eyes
she could find a flood
ruining the huts of her fancies.