Talking to myself

Everytime, inside the bus
Full of strangers
I keep looking for
Known faces
Someone I could
Lighten the journey with
Trading inanities
On life's Sisyphean grind
Or trumpeting new acquisitions
Aware of sounding like the serpent
Selling the forbidden fruit
Even while saying it
All the time both
Hiding the pain in lies
Pretending to be swimming
When being swept away
Living the same servile lives
Yet assuming sovereign airs
As the bus lurches, sways and surges
And I trade old words
With him, I often feel
I'm talking to myself
In a dream I've already had.
(Published in Kavya Bharati)

Down to earth

At the public tap
The mother does not see
The moons floating in the pots
Full and waiting to be fetched home
The child thinks they have fallen in
And whispers conspiratorially
She will rescue them
When no one is looking.
To grow up
Is not to see the moon in the pot
When you heft it to your hip