Waiting

So I eat like a caterpillar

Gobbling on whatever

Waiting for a metamorphosis

That would never come.

 

A gem of a person-

A diamond all jagged.

Slit me each time,

I tried to get close.

 

I feel like painting today,

But the colours in their bottle

Have all dried up- waiting,

How to draw?

 

I, accustomed to the torments

Of a self acclaimed martyr,

Bottle up-

the pus from an old wound,

The blood from a betrothed wound,

The jagged sheen smiling-

Paint in white and red-

The death,

The longing,

The mourning of lost love.

 

So I wait at a corner,

And peep at your lips and

Their sly ends,

Waiting for those hiccups-

They come to them when you

Badly miss someone.

 

But you sit as unyielding

As a cold floor,

on which lay shivering

A dying old soul

In want of a blanket.

Maybe it was never you

That I missed or loved,

I realize, ’twas

the portrait of pus and blood

That stands chipped, discoloured,

The distaste of its flakes,

So piquant in my mouth.

 

And my teeth clatter like

The soul on the cold floor-

Surviving on my warm tears,

Insulated in the shiny packing papers

Of the gifts you once gave.

 

The gem’s sheen blinds my eyes now.

So I turn the lights off,

Lo! You are gone.

I huddle under a chair upside down

And gobble whatever some more-

Waiting for a metamorphosis

That never comes.