Chipped nails

For ‘Strawberry’, who, like me, still doesn’t know what the hell happened.

your plastic smile gives off
a bitter odour in the untimely summer
rain. i
shrug; not for me
things of stolen beauty.

i dip my fingers in a bowlful of words—they
keep me sane. you
bite the notes of rapture that rise in my head.
(and, suddenly, every
place inside me
is anti-utopia.)
splinters of my dappled heart are strewn all over
our little confetti-laden
coffee table.

your terriblebrown voice cuts
through the trace of a twirl.
(it was lingering over
my fretful toes, and now it’s gone.)

i slip into another world, away
from this tirelonesome
reality, and i
start worrying about my
chipped nails.

Something reminded me of my school days yesterday; so, I ploughed through my journal and stumbled across a particularly interesting piece of prose (dated August 2006). I just made a poem out of it, and this is what I ended up with. The expression “chipped nails” didn’t appear in the original piece—I borrowed it from my recent conversation with ‘Bindi’.

Many thanks to ‘Bindi’ for tossing the words “chipped nails” at me, and for dancing with me even after the music stopped. And to ‘Information Sponge’ who, unknowingly, for a second time, made me come across a forgotten piece of work.