The Lunch Poem by Anirbit Mukherjee

A table for two. An empty chair.
A white cloaked man. A plate of edibles.
The scorching heat. The summer afternoon.
A run of time. A chase of dreams. A mist of thoughts.
A blinding stroke of existence between universes of nothingness.

A sms on her cell.

{ Isn't it that number from those pastel brown memoirs? }
{ Was it a reply? }

A pair of windows. The frilled curtains.
A pair of dark torchlights.
Beautiful!
To stare. To look. To gaze.

{ To notice? }

Was she the eternal audience..
Was she a melancholic onlooker....
At the stream of colourful matchboxes?
That carry carbon based bipeds.
To factories of existence and of monochrome thoughts.

{Is he too such a traveller? }

Will she return to the cubicles and the plastic walls?
Or will she return to the nihility of faceless identities?

Was the sms not an invitation too,
To yet another nullity?

{A nest? Or just a pile of brick and mortar? }

{Didn't they both steal something? To sms. To reply}

Even if it is a grand enactment. A lustrous stage.
If they both stole that vanishing time,
Shouldn't they choose the nest,
Against the colourful boxes and plastic partitions?

A choice?
Between her name and her identity?
Between anonymity in silent possibilities and
a fade away amidst the psychedelic matchboxes?
Between a possible shadow of nobody
and being a no one in the cubicles?



It is still an oblivion for which the search is all about.
It is for that iridescent thin line between the earth and the azure.
It is for those stolen moments between the lunch time and the cubicles.