All my life I grew up
Wanting to spill the beans at an awkward function
When blue-eyed minstrels threatened us with rancid dollops of poetry,
All my life I grew up
Wanting to travel the world and find out
Love in the vanishing vicinities of time.
How the pent-up, closeted cities would start dreaming again,
The fragrance of attar spreading across all their recesses where charred bodies lay after the war.
All my life I dreamt to walk beside you and see myself
Growing from the numb nutshell to the wandering fairy resting on the clocktower.
As John Denver would keep on strumming “Take me home, country roads,”
As Ulysses would enjoy that infectious smile and drink life to the lees!
All my life I grew up
As a woman-pendulum-icicle-tempest hovering through the ravages of life!
Sreetanwi Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University Kolkata. An Ex-Presidencian, she is the Chief editor of a bilingual biannual journal Litinfinite, with multiple indexing of international repute and archived in 117 global libraries including Princeton, Harvard, Oxford, and the Library of Congress. She is a bilingual writer published in Ekdin, Uttarer Saradin, Setumag, The Darjeeling Chronicle, Darjeeling Times, POL, The Dhaka Review, The Daily Bhorer Alo (Bangladesh), Muse India, Kochi Post, Kavya Bharati, Asian Cha, Poetry Potion (SA), Poetry Conclave and many more. She has read her poems on invitation by Sahitya Akademi and the Chandrabhaga Poetry Festival. Her book The Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up: A Feminist Interpretation of Fairy Tales received the ‘Rising Star’ non-fiction award in New Town book fair in 2019. She has two sole poetry books and is an invited poet to 18 anthologies. Her recent work includes 'Of Dry Tongues and Brave Hearts' (Anthology, English, Red River Publication) and a translated short story in an anthology of Kazi Nazrul Islam's short stories, a project from Kazi Nazrul University (Orient Blackswan).
