A Half-Written Poem

Arundhati Roy told us "to be everything")

How to be missing fingers

the unfinished tiffin box,

the broken dreams

the dry patches of blood,

the rotten bodies,

the burnt skin

the crumpled, smashed faces

the long waiting before the morgue

And getting used to the smell of human blood and flesh?

Does becoming everything mean turning into

a number from a name

Or leaving a half-written poem behind on a rail track?

Then how to write a half-written poem?

It requires nothing.

One just needs to be a faceless face,

So similar to the others

In hunger, in poverty, in pain

And in death too.

How to be everything?

By becoming a number in this country

Inspired by the story: A Timeless Video Loop Of Disaster published in Outlook by Chinki Sinha, the poem is an obituary in memory of the Balasore train accident, to those who couldn't complete the journey. Though the question remains- How many people ever complete the journey in our country?

Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection, The Musings of the Dark was published in 2020. The book has about a hundred poems written in protest against the humanitarian crisis from the abrogation of article 370, the Delhi riots, and the Shaheen Bagh movement to the unbearable sufferings of the migrant labourers due to the unplanned COVID - induced lockdown.