like a dream

Swastika Jajoo

insomnia is lemon sherbet on a burnt tongue. it is
a gasp of citrus you cannot hear or taste but it will
hurt, like the nightmares on whose waters you will
row and row, timid, tired, tender. you will
snap in and out like a fish struggling
for breath but gradually having developed
an affinity for the net,
its scales shiny in the winter sun and
mouth lifeless. it is what it feels like
to have woken up, or to have slept,
or to have lived, or to have died.

insomnia is not tender but you will
always have to be while writing of it,
warn the hands of the apathy and warm
the hands off of it. in dreamland you stretch
like your palette yearning for a taste of lemon
before being turned down. you are smaller
than the sky but run down by its grief so easily.
you cannot close your eyes without the fear of being
swallowed and spat out. when you drift past the clouds,
you think of the strength it takes to spell
a word when it has become a wound. the bones
bury it again and again till it throws a fit. you
are ready to write but when you are you
never know it — sleeping was a verb
all this while?

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Swastika Jajoo is currently studying linguistics in Japan, and is a 2021 Editorial Resident with The Seventh Wave. She won the second prize in the poetry contest organized as part of the international Glass House Poetry Festival in July 2020. She has been published with Riggwelter, Eunoia Review, Muse India, and The Huffington Post, among others, and her spoken word pieces have been featured on UnErase Poetry, one of India’s leading spoken word content producers. In April 2019, she gave a TEDx talk featuring poetry at her university. Her work is upcoming in Capsule Stories in December 2020 and in an anthology by Airplane Poetry Movement in 2021. She was also invited to perform with Rolling Stone India for Pride Month 2020.

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