Anindita Sarkar - Can we sleep in peace?

Anindita Sarkar - Can we sleep in peace?

Anindita Sarkar is a Research Scholar from India. She is pursuing her M.Phil degree from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Her works have recently appeared in Indolent Books, Ariel Chart Magazine, Otoliths, Writing in a woman’s voice, Scars Publication among others.

 

 

Can we sleep in peace?

 

I try to sleep

oscillating on the bed

trying to swallow air, to breathe

my house breathes relatively better

the windows flare and recede

in an impeccable rhythm.

Yes, you guess me right

I am not White

I’m a triggered gust of wind,

a jeopardized black woman

abandoned by a husband

for not being modelesque.

My dreams are whitewashed

so are the tell-tale scars on my skin

I possess no voice to reclaim

my diary nose-bleeds with insecurities.

But this is how I was raised

to wrap the thorns into a tube

and seal it like a folded leaf,

Yes, to admire the white sobriety

and savour their abbreviated slurs

“You are a rare orchid, vividly flowering”,

a buzzword for my mother,

she taught me to tread

on the asphalted sidewalk

frequented by my ancestors,

the highways are floored by the Whites,

so I sleep with a smile

on my harrowed fallow face

fantasizing about the bluest eyes.