She gave birth to miscarriages. Three, four, five.
Immature, gory mistake. She didn't eat enough.
She turns her head to look at them, licks a ear, nips a nose,
Then eats them whole.

That she is a dog should comfort you.
Yet, strangely, it does not. They are not far enough,
Not brutal or anecdotal or insignificant,
But running your races, licking your wounds.
And you in turn cannot but make a mother of her,
Her whimpering, heartache, her hunger, trauma.

She ate them, then went away and howled, outside.
Returned the next day, sniffing round the now-clean room,
Searching. Silence the indecent proposal.

becoming

Go on, give it to him. You have other games, and he's smaller than you..

-But I want it. It's mine. It's my favourite game, Ma…

Don't be so selfish. Give it. You have so much, you can't give this one thing?

-*sob*

She went out of the room and gave him the box herself, with 

everyone's parents watching approvingly, and 

the sob in her throat laughing at her. Good girl.

You—How do you do that?! Man, you're amazing! People should worship you. The jealousy would kill me.

- I—have to admit… I was plenty jealous at first. I mean, it was horrible, but I just decided, and then… that's it. It's ok, I mean, there's too many good things to let this ruin it…

Still. You're incredible. I couldn't do it, dude. I just couldn't. Like, wow.

- [*sob*]

Every night she screened the thoughts in her head. 

Edited out the thoughts that were nasty—

"I am not that person, I am not that person…."

— with the child sobbing for conventions and possessions just behind. Good girl.

Maybe she will actually become one. 

Apacha and Amachi first noticed him- he used to live across the street from them in Picnic Garden- because he used to take his motorbike to pieces when he came home every day. And then reassemble it the following morning, before riding it to work. So that noone would steal it, he told people, but maybe he just liked doing it. People stole lots of his ideas, though, and went and started companies with his machines, once they understood them, but there are some things you can't help. The part they couldn't help noticing every morning, it was so much fun, was him running down the street at top speed with his bike, kicking it to start, and then jumping onto it before it left without him.
He lived in a one-room flat where you had to go to buy WHYMUTO balm or oil (balm stayed longer, oil was easier to apply). In fact they called him Whymuto Mathaichen for it, and bought his balm in bulk because he might go broke and out of stock at any time. It was good for about a hundred different kinds of problems: aches, burns, scars, injuries, anything you can think of. It said so on the bottle, and lived up to it, which was a point of honour with him. WHYMUTO stood for Why Hungry Young Men Unable To Oversee (their present difficulties, and look to God). The only time he crashed his bike and nearly cut his leg in two, they dressed the wound nicely at the hospital, but he ran open, ripped it open, stuffed it with balm and then put on a bandage and went to sleep.
About a year after that, Jadavpur University received a machine from abroad, but it came in pieces, and noone there could figure it out. At the time, he was building a needle-making machine which he sold to someone because he needed the money to create the special kind of plastic figures he made, which danced when you touched them with wet hands. He went and offered his services, God was helping him, he refused assistants. Fixed the thing, and for reward, asked for a piece of land where he could grow tapioca. 

I should like to say Confusions, step aside, and kindly Do not disturb while you're at it.
But can I leave the confusions for later?
Can I push them out, or will they be hanging murkily round the door, whistling queasy tunes,
And when I turn around, they'll shove me in a sack and that will be that?
And even if I can make them go, will they be lurking right outside, waiting vindictively
To say I told you so, when I have to come back out the door again?
I should like to say Begone confusions! And then later say I never saw it coming.
Only I'd like to have seen it coming because people who didn't see it coming evidently
Need glasses, and I am far-sighted (I'd like to think).
And I should like to say Stay, Confusions! But that means every time someone says no,
I have to think Yeah, maybe No, and maybe walk out the door when nobody made me,
Just to avoid the ignominy of anyone forcing me out, kicking and screaming, even from
What I've always wanted. The other ignominy is private, noone saying I told you so,
Only the unruly inside voices screaming sometimes, I knew it.
And yet, should I like to say, Confusions, I shall deal with you later, please,
They will say, No thank you, Madam, we are here to collect what is ours only,
Please to cooperate, otherwise you will cooperate and not remember anything of it.

There are lots of existential questions that plague one

When one is trying to take a break from existence and 

All the hubbub, you know, that's much of a muchness.

Normally, one wishes to plod indiscriminately along streets and just

Land up in something heroic, you know, or make things sound suggestively

Controversial, but sometimes one wants just the plodding—and perhaps a drink or gossip—

Nothing too stressful, none of the talking, none of the learning and the manipulating—

It's such a task, and one can't even confide in people, that's just not done.

And the worst is, it can't be helped. None of that harsh stuff, please, 

Nothing gets done without it. One needs to overlook a lot of well-meaning fluff

While just being careful that in easing out the inconsequential,

One doesn't talk oneself out of everything.

I've learnt

Every night I pour a moat around my bed.

It keeps the heat at bay.

No rescues here, thanks, so I'm not missing out.

And I douse my bed and my body

so I don't burn. 

Don't bother knocking.

Sure in my stronghold, (no choice)

I sleep.

You know how when you look straight at a lightbulb, it sort of
Blinds you for a bit and then lingers in your vision after that?
I hate that. I want the filament to be out of sight,
Obscured by the frosting, exalted by the cherubim and
Unknown to those who didn't pay attention in physics class.

I want it to burn out of sight, to shatter with the white heat it withstands
Without my seeing it; so that when it stutters and explodes,
storm in a glass bulb, I can twist it out of the socket myself,
toss it into the dustbin, with the word 'fused' to cover
The violence.

She said, what's the need to tell

all this truth? what's so great

about saying things you don't want to say

and the other person doesn't want to hear?

I didn't say anything. I thought she was silly.

I cannot find the word to explain, now. I have searched,

and I have searched. I have asked the people that I dared to ask,

held up a sign on the side of a street, rummaged

through everything and nothing, filled out empty supplications.

I cannot see it simply myself, as I used to do—a lesson

mnemonised, memorised and left behind. Trying to understand

is followed by failing, and sometimes there is the will to try again,

and sometimes not.

I can't write. I can't describe stuff poetically, pretty unusual words piled up (though actually quite carefully arranged) with an exquisite green tortoiseshell comb poked in (artlessly?) at the top.

Now you say—that was quite a pretty turn of phrase you had there. I'm sure you can do it! Don't have to give up hope(, beta)!

And I say, yeah maybe. But I'm a content girl, not one of those floozy (or pansy) form whores. The Real Stuff, that's what I'm after. Screw you, MBA-ed world with Pretentious Artist Soul.

I can write, you dryly note, these Wollstonecraft rants which say nothing new, and not very amusingly either.

This is true. And I spend an awful lot of my time agreeing to this sort of thing

Because I can. I spend a similar lot of time not laboring for my Right to Disagree with it

— in a positive, constructive sort of way, of course. But

I do not dare, I do not dare

to waste a lovely green comb

stuffed awkwardly

into my long, dry hair.

I start a lot of sentences with 'I wish'.

I stay in bed, hoping that things in the days will arrange themselves

In front of me, a neat series of coherent necessities,

Stretching all the way to death, whenever that is.

I hope that there will be nothing to do, only

My being able to see, appreciate, think

—Entirely without the accompanying effort of proving it—

Will give rise to the desired destiny.

And so it is that I am gripped, once every couple of weeks,

With a terrible fear of a life in which I cannot decide

Because I have never thought out, or decided,

(This, too, you notice, is non-optional)

And I am swept off to things I don't want

(Ha! So I do have preferences!)

With (self-)pity for life-support.

And I decide then that I will take responsibility,

Think for myself, not be a ninny,

But I can't even claim the legitimacy of new year's resolutions

For these. I don't know where they go.

But neatly, cutting my losses,

I acknowledge to those who bear the brunt

The wrongness of my wrong.

I don't know if they forgive—

perhaps they belittle it, out of my calculated over-estimation.

And I do it again. I hardly realize I'm doing it.

Self-awareness, pah.

I can't quite explain why I have no stories.
No funny intro to my life, all the time I have spent
in all the years you never knew me,
Or in yesterday, or the day before.

I didn't do nothing, you know.
Though my funny bone is brittle
and my life tellable only in episodes, hurtling towards—
—more episodes to come.

Perhaps I'm too predictable once you get used to me; Yet

when you rewind to episode two or three for that joke—whatsit—
you'll have forgotten I used to be like that.

I'm tired of myself.

Actually no, I'm just saying that.

I do tire of myself, I need to experience the outside,

But my concern is with and for myself.

It's a kind of colonizing; reducing to an experience

All of that outside, and appropriating it

To write myself into the books.

I won't defend it as creative collateral damage.

I will defend it, though. Hold the fort

For my brain's right to devour, exploit,

To do damage to itself, to have its quality recognized,

To melt, impermanently, and be resurrected or reborn.

I Other you right back, you Other, you.

Take THAT.

Then it strikes me.

No use, and that's why I'm inviting the fight, again.

To be split-second sure, as I hear jaw decisively Crack

Again.

The talking in our house

Is like a trickle from the tap

Even after a long time

Your hands haven't gotten wet

And when you need to soap, it won't lather.

The listening in our house

Is like a tape-recorder

What you say to it makes no difference;

Yet it has recorded the sounds perfectly,

Can repeat them verbatim,

Without understanding.

The laughing in our house

Is like the fancy crockery.

We can display it, visitors and guests can attest;

We use it on ourselves once in a while

And enjoy it; but normally, amongst ourselves,

You wouldn't have guessed it was there.

The love in our house

Is like my mother's wedding ring.

It legitimizes, excuses, entitles;

Assumed to be there, hidden away somewhere

Until one day, searching for something else,

We realize its gone, with no more than the basic minimum pang.