I chatted with my last lover for years
words, words and words
all empty and lying.
I waited till the last intonation melt
in the dead phone call
he hung up before me
and I kept waiting in dead numbness.
The flame of that gas stove
might have inflamed with the untold silence that
Sylvia had in her head.
How to express emptiness in words?
Disjointed, withdrawn emptiness?
Sylvia’s emptiness is/was painted as
a feminine depressed temper.
What will they call my emptiness?
They don’t know of emptiness.
Emptiness is noise.
Hollowed, dark and deep noise.
The noise of the broken whiskey bottles.
The noise of the choked throat.
The noise of every slit of hands.
Why can’t they see that
choice is a strong woman’s prerogative?
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection, The Musings of the Dark was published in 2020. The book has about a hundred poems written in protest against the humanitarian crisis from the abrogation of Article 370, the Delhi riots, and the Shaheen Bagh movement to the unbearable sufferings of the migrant labourers due to the unplanned COVID-19 induced lockdown.
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