Mirror by Sukanya Venkat

This is the first guest post on my blog by the wonderful, Sukanya Venkat. Although she claims to be unfamiliar with poetic terrain, I think she navigates her way quite impressively. Here is Mirror.

This woman inside me

I want to look like her-

fierce

shining

full of chaos and poetry,

unborn stories glistening in her veins,

a mighty winding river 

full of fury 

and quietude.

I want her courage. For adventure. 

For falling darkness and blinding light

Her obsession with the truth. 

Her artless ways of finding it

Her gentle ways of speaking it

Her talent

for alchemizing lies.

This woman inside me-

I want to be her

I want 

her wars

her violent landscapes

her passionate marriage to freedom.

I desire her fortitude.

Her forgiveness. 

Her abundant wrath. 

Her infinite love.

I covet her femininity. 

Her celebration. Her divinity.

Her imperfection 

and her scars.

This woman inside me, 

(my body my heart my soul my brain)

I want her to take me in. 

Turn me into her. 

I want her stories, her secret dreams.

Her life.

I want my mirror to swallow me and spit me out;

covered in mercurial incandescence

in my dreams, I am she. 

There is no separation. 

In reality 

She towers above me 

And I worship at her feet.

Our life…

This life…

No, this dream.

It is us. 

(It is her. It is me.)

I am the cosmos. 

I am her. 

We are inseparable

My nemesis and I 

We 

Are one.

Sukanya is a fellow traveler from Somewhere Else world. 

And when she's not doing fancy things that usually make up her day,  

she is busy waging war on pages with the most difficult weapons to wield- words.

She tweets at Stormborn@suku06.

Unreasonable

My heart is a balloon. 
It wants to rise out of my chest. 
Doesn't realize the mechanics of flotation.
Helium and haemoglobin don't mix.

Inverted Musings

life 

calls me

away and above

everything else.

there is this inward swirling-

ask the wind to show you how

with leaves.

tumble and dry

up in the sky.

but wait-

that's me,

and the swirling is also me.

in my stomach

the churning

and yearning
is once again
me.

life calls out to me.

and paused, somewhere 

high up in the unknowable sky,

the upside-down me

is trying to find out-

how many 'me's have swirled

in the same wind

like leaves 

from the same tree.

On Chances

In the years that have passed, we have changed.

So much.

Sometimes, an echo will add- too much.

Who decides the much-ness of things.

Who decides but you.

Why do we take chances?

It’s instinct.

It’s an attempt to feel more.

It’s an attempt to grow.

Even when you fail, you grow.

We are forever thrusting our feelers out into the world, an invitation saying- 

Yes, I want to feel more. I want to be more than I am right now.

I want to be one with all that there is.

Because maybe deep down, this hunger for everything is a call.

A call from oneself, to oneself.

A glorious returning of the parts to the whole.

The universe exists in you.

As thought.

As potential.

And maybe, as soul.

How can you not want more, when you are made of so much.

We want to feel the vastness of who we are fit and maybe even be, all that there is.