Lahari Mahalanabish (Chatterji)‘s works were shortlisted for Mslexia Poetry Prize (2021), Erbacce Prize Poetry Competition (2009 and 2010), Eyelands Book Awards (2019 and 2020); long-listed for the Grindstone Short Story Prize (2020). She has authored 2 books – ‘Tales of the Anointed Skeletons and Love’ and ‘One Hundred Poems’.
Gift Wrapping
I saw the book on gift-wrapping
on a shelf crammed with glossy craft books
and leafed through its pages
which were about
the varied ways a ribbon can twirl,
the ways that a colored paper
or a collage of multihued scraps
can swaddle a box or a tinkling tin can,
how the crinkly sheet can be perked
to resemble mountains,
how a frizzy green fabric can carpet like the grass
or a cardboard packaging spruced up
to a poster painted house
I was charmed, took it home and set out
to wrap your gift like the earth is wrapped with life
and now the gift, all covered up for you, is
a guess before the truth.
You will unravel the knot of the ribbon
and pull it away slowly, satin trailing
the concealed contours of your present,
then you will flip the neat folds,
and part the wrapping as if you were
opening the door to step in somewhere
the paper crunching like the untrimmed
grass in your childhood garden after the rains,
when you will finally uncover your gift
the breeze sweeping into your room
will clutch the remnants of the wrapping;
they will glide like magic carpets
our fairytale first encounter – that starry night
in the early autumn of murmuring forests
and long after when my bones will powder
the slush of rainwater gullies,
the ribbon will unreel
letting you feel the earliest tugs,
all the clippings of cardboard and chips of paper
will slip out of their place,
unwrapping me for you yet again,
and you will see me like you see the oasis
plucking off all the mirages.