Delivery of bad news
And suddenly, there was no one to ask,
where did you eat your lunch,
and did you chew enough before swallowing as you often do?
No, Mother, father called last night,
he was loud again, but now, in his sobbing,
the plate fell from my hand,
and then the phone, and then the heart, and then the body,
all of me was on the floor as you were gone,
as father said, your mother is gone.
At first, I dialed your number,
because he has always had a habit of lying,
in the next moment,
I tried to be a strong son,
I took my face in my hands and laughed,
some of them still think I was laughing at your death,
but you’d know better, Mother,
I was only laughing at the fact that your death came to me against our plans,
without asking what the son wants, what the mother wants,
and what both of them want from their little time together.
Then, I woke up ten years later into my life,
and the news kept coming:
you were gone; you were always gone.
I went to the sea and saw your face in the water,
I took your face in my cupped palms and ran towards home,
I tried my best to hold, but first, your nose slipped between my fingers,
then your eyes, then your lips,
and by the time I got home, you died all over again;
it is difficult to keep hold of water and dead faces.
When I write this poem,
I write it from a body that grew inside of you,
which is to say I love you without yet having seen your face,
or having held your hand in a fearful world,
which is to say the time has come for me to pick up my bones and body,
and leave for a world where you are not constantly disappearing,
which is to say,
Mother, you can stop dying now,
I accept with certainty that you are gone.
Prashant Pundir is an outsider artist who just likes knocking at the door. To them, poetry is a response to the everydayness of life. They really like to write about loss, grief, complexity in relationships, mundane things, miscommunications, empty spaces, and so much more.