You made me feel invincible,

I never felt alone

But everything turned grey

You didn’t say you loved me

When I fell to my knees for you

Her words lingered in your mind

Drowning out mine

Silencing our world

You didn’t say goodbye

You didn’t even run

You left me on shaky ground

With no lights to find the truth

I didn’t shine bright enough

I told you who I was I opened my world to you

you watched me sleep in as the light peered through

stroking my hair away from my eyes

Fluttering eyelashes encasing a beautiful sea of comfort

embracing my morning with smiles and freckled grin

I would have watched you dance around the kitchen until my eyes couldn’t stay open

I wanted to be the reason you smiled every morning every day

Every time you heard that song you would think of me think of all the times we were together

exiledhome:

matia mou,
what you said
other men have only said drunk,
smothered in the sweet scent of spirits.
jani na, jani na
where did you learn such bitter phrases -
certainly not in the dictionary
we penned together.

There’s nothing sacred in love
or violence.
Did we light the diya
without a lick of oil?
Or did the little lantern only
overflow
and we burned clay to ash?

matia mou,
amar shona,
if I could see even the moon in your eyes,
I’d devour my suffering
and call it delicious.

-Five years in, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

glossary:

matia mou - my eyes, Greek
jani na - I don’t know, Bangla
diya- it’s like a little lamp, Hindi (possibly Bangla, too. idk. My Bangla is still weak ya’ll)
amar shona - my beloved, Bangla

Another poem - this time I’m experimenting with a multilingual one, rather than translating. Left everything Romanized to make it easier to pronounce/read.

Soul sucking
Life draining

Time ticking, slowly and taunting

Despire sneaks behind closed doors
Fear lurks in dark shadows

Waiting patiently for my guard to be down;

Grinning discreetly as it crawls upon my crumbled form;

“Surrender” whispers in thick air

“Yield” grazes the surface of my skin

Feeling defeated and imprisoned, I merely have room to breathe. My feet are too weak to flee.

Feeling threatened and trapped, I merely see a way out. My eyes are too watery to see.

Soul sucking
Life draining

Time ticking, slowly and taunting

My delusion of wait and hope to be rescued has broken into pieces.

My dream of independence and freedom has vanished into emptiness.

Thoughts, hope and love drain out of my veins

Leaving my soulless shell laying aimlessly among all

Lights may shed here and now

But it matters not

My eyes turned blind

My heart burried six feet down

My faith lost in the search of truth

I wake or I sleep

I walk or I stay still

It matters not

Soul sucking
Life draining

Time ticking, slowly and taunting as I drift further, disappearing into nothingness.

The List:
carrot, eggplant, arbi,
capsicum, green peas -
press one for more options -
apples, new list apps
applesauce and ketchup
not Heinz but the cheaper one,
a new pressure cooker because the whistle doesn’t work
And with each tweak it tizzles out more,
theek nahi hai, yaar 
no matter how many times you take it in,
it’s just jugaad again,
a permanent temporary fix,
so we need a new one, stainless
steel and big, bara
to cook all of your dreams.
grand total rages against your wallet,
paper thin but it’s digital,
anyway,
your eyes glaze, blaze
as the bag boy, too tired, too hassled,
too underpaid squishes the eggs
beneath the cooker
the shells quake in your eardrums
the smell of something rotten
beneath all those discounts.

-it’s what you don’t see that matters, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

when the monsoon came
she cursed. She had been asking
those folks in the co-op
twiddling their thumbs and licking
the edges of their rupee notes
from the maintenance bills,
she’d ask them
to repair the terrace aching
and wheezing with water
from the early drizzles but
the treasurer preferred a Kashmir scarf
and the chairman a new scooter,
secretary painted his living room and added twenty rupees
for a samosa for the loyal watchman
and so she slept beneath flickering lights
hoping the wires didn’t blaze up,
consuming her whole.

-the problem with housing societies, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

forgotten,
egg yolk splits, sautées
golden sun between butter and pepper
white halo hardens, boils bubbling a leper browning
while the one yellow eye runs
with the clock hands
carefully I peel the rubbery flesh away
lay it on saucer, slather bread with butter
already wondering what wry churns the day brings.  

-absentminded mornings, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

Today I’ve launched my first poetry collection on Kindle.

To celebrate I’ve marked it as 75%, so you can now get it for $0.99 on Amazon. This deal ends on the 28th.

Check it out here: https://getbook.at/ShyAnger

plastic
straight, good posture
white and abrasive as baking soda
thrifty, ideal of motherhood
hosting new years parties and other
get-togethers for the kids while sipping,
socially, of course, a margarita,
she buys her children, ruddy-nosed
devils, gifts while their friends stand with empty hands,
letting those other kids,
kids with empty pockets,
sit to the side,
and know their place.

steel
another mother she
drives thirty miles to pick up a daughter’s friend,
male, lanky, and for cops
the wrong color at midnight
from a gas station in the wrong part of town
which is really just code
for poor and less white
and she takes him home to
sleep on the sofa
gives him hot tea
and in the morning pancakes with eggs
she doesn’t ask about the bruises
on his forearms or his heart
she just feeds him and drives him
to the library with a sandwich in old Tupperware
he doesn’t need to return
although he does with a thank-you note
and gratitude in his heart,
despite all the bitterness around him.

-a tale of two mothers, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

she serves silence,
it lies on the tongue
like ash.

her quiet cuts
jagged,
tears the hem of my heart

I unravel,
and she throws my words away
with burnt-black peppers.

-she serves silence

in this scorched, sun-baked season
we prayed for rain
and when it came
summer heat blazed
as if blooming,
polyester chaffed against
cotton, against skin sticky.
we filled our teacups with humidity
and decided the earth
knew itself better
than we.

-rain prayer, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

From the desk
her spine creaks,
each rubbery cartilage
like a phone pole.
each breath realigns
bone and belief  
she types away her thoughts
knuckles thinking faster than
brain cells, and with clacks.
it’s only been four hours,
starting into screen light
she wonders when she’ll see the sun.

-9 to 5, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

directionally challenged
athens is the only city
her feet knows,
she wanders down alleyways
undiscovered
but familiar
and sits beneath an orange tree.
she takes one plump
sunset shaded fruit,
peels back thick skin,
juice gushes down her arm.
yet she smells cypress trees,
olive oil offerings, and cinnamon.
she whispers prayer,
nimble fingers pressing
a golden owl.

-for Athena, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

some days
I spring to life at dawn
well-oiled and eager I
glide on tiles as if made
of sunflowers

and other
I drag my body
from the sheets
mumble poems,
sweet nothings dull crayons
with which I color the gray space.

-gray space, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

you ask for sweet lime
scent sour
I carve carefully
the seeds from the nectar
each white pip
tumbles on the floral saucer
as if dragon bones
divining your daily fortune.
I toss them to the crows,
palm-sized sparrows
so somewhere, perhaps
a tree will grow
and those limes
might actually be sweet.

-sweet limes, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

no one tells you
being an immigrant
is being a stallion
front hooves tied knotted
course rope
chaffing at your ankles
holed up in a greener pasture
gnawing at tender leaves
while watching
acres away
those you love
wild and free, wind
whistling against their cheeks,
a throbbing ache to be with them
but knowing you cannot.

-tied, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

overcast
you sit
suck on mango skin
the juice on your chin
drips on
basil leaves,
your hands already wet
before the rain
we watch the yellow mountains
spring back to life
verdant, almost emerald
green foliage tender at the end of summer,
nourished by the dead roots
beneath softened soil.

-end of summer, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

a head of cauliflower
bald
green leaves in a heap,
i slice
each yellowing branch
hair thin.
they tell me threadlike cuts cook better,
taste softer,
the closer it is breaking.

-breaking, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

they repeated
that your story didn’t matter -
a mantra
they couldn’t calculate
the value of the sun.

-value, Kelsey Ray Banerjee

Hurricane Force Winds

Take me forward, take me back, take me to the place

where this is over and where it never happened. That back room

painted gray and white brick where memory goes to die, where the blood

of memory grows hyacinth, violets, carnations, flowers with made up meanings.

I wash my wounds with the blood of gods, scrub them with bath salts,

grab the skin at the edge and pull. Half the king’s fool, half a girl

gazing out the window in a periwinkle high collared dress, goat hooves

hidden in either costume. I kick out and hope the blow lands on a head of blonde hair

and not the edge of a cliff. Your brand new hunting dog has a taste for my tears,

your brand new hunting boots are a blank canvas waiting for tragedy, waiting for me

to spit out my broken front tooth, covered in sacrifice. So I leave it there

in the circle of mushrooms, something so explicit, so obvious a remnant

of the vulgar altar I never built to worship a body I’ll never touch.

There it lies, covered in dirt and the nectar of a fig. You ask me to stop talking

about him three years ago and him now. I smile, showing off the new

juvenile space where my tooth used to be. I swoon, cross my hands over

the pulsating, porous moon in my chest where my fire red heart should beat.

Portrait of the Artist Mid-Death

It will be violent, of course it will.

It will be so theatrical

only I could have written it.

I hope a part of you believes that I did.

It will be violent, in every sense of the word.

Violent: brutal, savage, wild

Violent: intense, unbridled, consuming

Violent: ephemeral, fugitive

It will be violent, but it will be true.

The harmonizing bleats of the

fatal blow and my grunt of pain?

As real as the fear I kiss on the lips.

It will be violent, and you will cry

You will cry “never forget!”

You have already forgotten

my faults, dearest.

And who are you if not your faults?

“My skin shines crimson red. I am sweetest fruit, an irresistible delicacy to taste but this is a superficial illusion underneath my skin, I have worms; worms that crawl about and make my insides rot. The rot never stops I try to hold it at bay but the worms never die my rot spreads about yet I desperately hold my facade this false life is all I have I am afraid to show my rot I am afraid to show my horrid truth it would strike fear and disgust on beholders and the sweet fruit I appear to be, would no longer be so, I made my choice all my days I will pretend hoping that no one sees my rot but a part of me begs for a different outcome part of me wants someone to see my rot and how I wish to see pity in their eyes.”

- The Rot, Himeros

“slowly moving on”

“stagnant”

You’ve hurt me

Irrevocably

There’s nothing poetic about it

No pretty words

To describe the pain

I’m just

Empty

-mouse

“nothing lasts forever” [edit]

“nothing lasts forever”

“was it all in my head” [edit]

“was it all in my head”

“deluded daydreamer”

“leech”

“lonely together”

“only a matter of time”

“self-care isn’t selfish”

“self-inflicted”

“nothing”

“unrequited”

“the v o i d”

“so close yet so far”