Aparna Singh’s Two Poems

Aparna Singh is a poet who writes on myriad themes. She uses simple language to versify deep ideas of identity, memory, nostalgia and even the agency of language. Her poem ‘Abyss’ points out the incommunicability of language in a world where genuine words are silenced, manipulated, misinterpreted, ultimately silencing the truth that takes the guise of a ‘patient etherized’. Her verses hang between despair and hope and the poet seeks refuge in imagination where she visits treasured moments.

1. Abyss

It all began when I stopped
Trusting language
Do words really mean what they
Pretend to mean

With my authority
Slipping away into
The abyss of precarity
Words masked as they were
Looked the other way
As if I didn’t mean what I
Said
And what I said was not
Even close to what I meant
They even tricked me into believing
That I existed or maybe not
Or into ways of thinking
and unthinking

Enough is enough
They reprimanded

That is when I decided
I must use them with caution
Or maybe lock them in some
Remote corner of my mind
And ask them to stay put

“Like a patient etherized upon
A table… ”

2. The Attic

these are my neighbors
their clothes pegged on
loosely tied strings
what if the strings came crashing down
on the attic of my dreams
they looked like a ruffling mirage
of places they had visited or maybe not
why does the attic bear with all of this
why does it not say a word
the winds pretended to have answers
as they rustled through them
scattering painted privacies
with a wistful disregard
oh! I always forget the attic has cracks
that seep into the landscape of my
imagination and whisper secrets
this was where love vows were exchanged
the lonely child counted the stars
the insomniacs reinvented themselves
unheard stories found the wind

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