The things we do for likes...
1. PLAYING TO THE GALLERY
Cat memes.
Your toddler’s first day at playschool.
A girl’s night out. The pie you baked.
A grainy image of you at sixteen,
Big hair and pink plastic earrings,
Axl Rose in spandex shorts
Behind you on a poster
Bought at Archies in 1986.
Better still, a fangless thought,
Scribbled behind a Starbucks bill,
A requiem to the fading slant of sunshine
That illuminates your windowsill,
Ever so gently.
182 likes.
Boom!
2. TO-DO LIST It's incredible
How many 'things to be done'
I can come up with to avoid
Getting the words on the page.
It's excruciating. It's painstaking.
I am not a masochist. (I think.)
It could be that I'm an imposter
as I'd suspected all along,
with a waffling talent and even less grit.
Holden's phoney.
So. I tidy. I organise. I de-clutter.
I schedule the lives of others.
Until all is in its rightful place.
Except myself.
3. JHUMPA
When finally you’re okay
That you’re no Jhumpa Lahiri,
No Arundhati Roy,
No Chitra Banerjee Devakaruni,
No Kamila Shamsie, even! -
Suddenly you're free,
Warts and all, to be,
Or not, to be.
4. SCAB
It’s 7.17 and
I have a few minutes
before dinner
to grow this seed.
This little gash!
Just a chilli flake,
but a scab-portal,
I must scratch
to open the vein…
A familiar gush!
An ooze, really.
And then, the prize:
Silence, awhile.
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