Poetry

I’m just a chapter girl
a girl from a random part of the story no one remembers.
I’m the girl friends forget to invite.
I’m the girl cousins don’t mention to their kids.
An NPC in my own game.
I’m not the girl you root for in a novel,
Just a bystander, a friend of a friend of the protagonist,
existing only to push them further in their story.
I’m a girl far from popularity,
a girl who is good in college
not good enough for the hall of fame,
nor bad enough to linger in the minds and
tongues of teachers or professors.
I exist. I just exist.
In a square, a block, walled in on every side.
My role is limited to a single chapter,
where no one remembers that I never got closure,
not even the writers themselves.

©️kanikachugh

I feel it too much
those lines I highlight in my current novel,
the black necklace somebody gifted and forgot,
dried sunflower still in a glass full of water,
my apron’s pocket full of herbs by my mother,
those coffee breaks where I miss my best colleague,
my journal’s empty pages where I scribble and scribble until it holds nothing.
I feel it all, in the darkest of hours or in the crack of the dawn.
Feelings stick with me like a leech who eats you up. I wish I could feel less. But then I think I would probably live less.

©kanikachugh

Smog doesn’t make it easy
neither the feet tapping to curb the cold.
Feels tiresome than last time, somehow.
This wait! The wait
of two blaring headlights
running greasily on snake tracks
approaching from the no-land
on blue-black, blurry winter nights.
This time, the wait is over
I tell my heart.
2 mins before the clock hits 10,
It will arrive.
You’ll arrive.
It will be over and
It will be worth it.
These ten years.
you’ll be here, as promised,
before it’s 10, you said.
I stopped the time for you,
You’ll be here at 9:5 68
And no more years to wait.

©️kanikachugh

I see an Earth worm

It disgusts me .

So much so that I

Judge, and judge, and judge

‘Why don’t you grow?

Why this dirt comforts you?

Why are you so slow?’

And let it die

in pretence of helping it.

Then I blame it couldn’t take

the pressure this life offers.

I’m not at fault.

After all I’m a human too,

I did what humans do

Kill!

In the mornings,
I see you, I meet you
we exchange some greetings
Initiate small talk and then
we both go our separate ways.

At night, I write letters to you
letters enclosing vulnerabilities
letters carrying intimacy
letters that I’ll never send
hand-written letters that
know the unapologetic, ego-less me,
letters that could have brought us together and made us laugh at 2am in the kitchen
letters in my drawer that chokes to death every night.

Again, in the morning
we see each other, do a small talk
like some religion
and I constantly chant
in the back of my mind
‘You’re not the same person I talk to
every night but oh, I so wished you were’.
And we go our separate ways.

It’s Sunday

They say it’s God’s day.
So what do we do? Make a wish?
break an old heavy habit?
take sides of countries in the comments section?
promise to floss our teeth?
inhale the sulfur of insult on a lone road?
shake December hard to shed all leaves?
bury ourselves 10 feet below to
know how it feels to be dead?

It’s Sunday, gentlemen and ladies and all
we should have expected nothing
than a rainbow every Sunday
nothing less than meeting an unknown,
kind stranger on Sunday
nothing less than life to be labelled as
Hell and Heaven as one
nothing less than the lead of a
pencil refusing to omit
nothing less than the inflicted pain
on bruised knees and not by wars
nothing less than finding peace in this chaos.

You go to a thrift store
buy me a cheapest, elegant
china dish
bring it home
and break it.
I say nothing.

You borrow my bag
for the interview
and some of my experience,
then hand me the wait
but celebration to the other.
I say nothing.

I listen to your stories
all night long.
I listen to your complaints
all day long.
But you practice deafness
I say nothing.

I know the secrets
I know all the weaknesses
I play piano with
people’s trigger points, you say.
Oh, my smartness offends you
and my numbness pleases you.

Wet sweater, five Mondays,
undiscovered language, 2mm deep pocket
and a cheap whiskey—I become all
to make you miserable and say nothing.

I say this is it

©kanikachugh

I met you in Summer

Hell! You were Summer.

One season that I never was fond of.

I, a girl with an autumn-cold heart

drawing crude caricatures of aloofness.

Guess, which season I miss now!

We have December starting

winters approacing

And I don’t have

any fresh memories to hold onto

or the taste of your first words reviving my bones

or your warm smile to stop my shivers.

How cruel and systematic the universe has to be

to not make me meet you in every season for the first time.