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I was always possessive
a magpie clutching its glitter,
a child gripping candy too tight to share.
My white saree still smells of unshed evenings,
the Lamy pen holds poems I never gave away,
and the dog-eared Sherlock Holmes...
no one else has traced its pages with their fingers.
I let nothing slip.
Not even a sigh.
Not even for a second.
But that night
you loomed above,
your shadow devouring mine,
while I sank into the coverlet,
its threads thick with the musk of women
who had arched, gasped, and spilled
their ghosts here before me.
I do not grieve for you.
Not your touch,
nor the ruin it left on my skin.
My quiet rage
is for the coverlet
faithless, perfumed with strangers,
holding their secrets tighter
than it ever held me.
# The Coverlet Knows The coverlet knows what the pillow whispers at midnight— how the body curls into itself, a fist around the heart. It knows the salt of dreams, the way sweat blooms like flowers no one planted, the fevered geography of sleep. The coverlet knows which shoulder bears the weight, which leg kicks free, which hand reaches across the cold expanse of sheet for something that isn't there. It has counted every restless turn, every prayer muttered into darkness, every small surrender before dawn breaks its seal. The coverlet knows but keeps its counsel— a faithful witness to the night's small violences, the body's quiet confessions, the soul's unmapped territories. It asks nothing. It forgives everything. It simply holds us as we become ourselves again, thread by thread, breath by breath, in the hours when no one else is watching.
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