the attic

Illustration: Bharati Varrier

                                                    

A cluttered storehouse is my attic,

an overflowing archive of rankling thoughts

crammed into dark spaces of isolation.

Accumulations of stubborn grit -

damp, stale, acrid residue from outdated grief -

survive in greasy reticence

the cycles of time and reason.

Rags of unwanted memories,

chunks of broken vases of dreams,

lie abandoned

with old records of truth and fallacies.

Fear, like a creepy multi-legged,

is entrapped in a fuzzy cobweb

of flashbacks and extrapolations.

Will the tarantula crawl out

and traverse the hidden crevices

of the crowded attic of my brain?

I’ll let the darkness, the silence,

and the stillness be,

lest I send the mites –

the qualms –

running all over my raw nerves

in fits of frenzy.

I wish I could vacuum my attic clean.

[Featured as Weekly Poem by Oz Poetic Society for the week February 2-9, 2014]