My Life in Art
I wanted to draw a bird but the bird’s beak came out as a flying kite the bird’s tail looked like my mother’s hand and its wings took the shape of a knife.
Art: poems and photographs by Muskan Kapoor
You & I
To live is not to pause, but flow. This does not mean life is a river and not a pond — it means: within water, we’re either leaf or stone.
This small life
Sitting on the temple steps, I watched a game unfold — one crystal of sugar, someone’s dropped offering, but for three ants that sweet white speck was god itself. The three ants rioted over it, wriggling and clawing until one fell into a small lake spilled from a priest’s pot. The ant thrashed & in a blink faded to a floating black dot. The remaining two stopped fighting & I turned my back on god.
Common Ground
A conch-shaped bug crawls toward a dumpster and I wonder where it’s going at that curling, swirling pace? A place to hide? Escaping the crush of giant careless feet? Pursuing a scent? An endless, mindless sense of survival? Or to seek whatever it finds wandering? Maybe it’s moving away from my eyes, refusing to be jailed by my camera, resisting its role as the hero of this poem. Everything feels like a question except for the gratitude the bug & I feel for this dumpster.
Tender Failures
I’ve always loved watching squirrels play — their quick electric moves, holding acorns in their tiny paws as they sit upright, their sharp teeth nibbling rapidly, their eyes darting, always watchful — but they never come near me. So this morning I stuffed my bag with peanuts, thinking today would be different, thinking when I see one, I’ll lure it closer. But when I spotted one and took a step, it ran away, hiding behind a large rock. After much careful pursuit, I made a small mountain of peanuts, a quiet apology on the ground, and walked away, watching the trees keep secrets I’ll never learn.
Hide & Seek
For some days now my ears have been hearing from different kinds of people that a mongoose lives in that empty field. Now whenever I pass that field my eyes search for the mongoose, my stomach wonders what it eats, my mind wonders where it hides & my heart wonders how it might look dressed up for festivals. Every day I wait for that mongoose & every day it plays the role of hiding.
Study in Metaphor
A jar of honey slipped from my hand and glazed the ground. Ants arrived in waves to taste and hoard that sweetness. Then came a third party who ruled the world, with them a large bucket brimming with water, turned it over like a hat. The army of ants drowned in the flood. Those who survived were crushed beneath the bucket.
Fear
A rat entered my room & everything seemed to fall apart. The fault wasn’t his, nor mine — it belonged to the fear we both were living at the same pace. His fear kept hiding him, my fear kept chasing him until his fear defeated mine and full of tremors he found his way out the door. His trembling told me he would never again try to befriend a human.
The Sky
Weary from work, I stepped outside. The wind kissed my cheeks, whispered she’d been waiting for me. Dew-flecked grass laughed, blessing my feet with clover blooms. Gray clouds opened their mouths and smiled, soft rain misting the earth. Wind sang a duet with leaves while flowers posed riddles to the trees who answered in ghazals. The sky burst into applause. I patted the sky’s back, shabash shabash shabash. After a long breath, I handed the sky my pride & it returned to me my burden & each of us walked our separate ways.
Notes on Freedom
Air within a bubble — a queen when trapped. Soon as she was freed her crown collapsed.
Scissors
I have a piece of fabric and what I must do with it is in my hands. In my other hand is a needle & thread. In my third hand: scissors; and the fourth holds sorrow. I drop everything my first three hands are carrying onto the earth and hobble into the world with the burden of the fourth.