[dVerse] June 25th — Ars Poetica with a Faulty Exit Door

A poem seldom arrive clean.

It comes in through the window

with dust on its knees,

carrying one cracked cup,

one unpaid bill,

one mother’s voice pressed

against the wrong side of a door.

It rarely ask for a desk.

It sits on the floor

beside the body

and begins taking attendance.

Here is the throat,

still functioning as a checkpoint.

Here is the stomach,

refusing citizenship.

Here is the girl under the desk,

still waiting for the bell

to mispronounce freedom.

A poem should never be used as a lantern.

Do not insult it with usefulness.

A poem is the matchstick

struck inside a locked room,

not enough to save anyone,

but... just enough to prove

there was oxygen here once.

Sometimes it is a witness statement.

Sometimes it is the broken crayon

smuggled out of childhood.

Sometimes it is my own handwriting

dragging a chair

to the centre of the court

and saying:

your honour,

the body remembers

what the father edited out.

As I have said before,

I do not write

because language heals.

I write because silence

keeps trying to inherit me.

I write because the wound

has developed clerical skills

and keeps misfiling my life

under manageable woman.

I write because somewhere

inside this humiliating machinery

there is still a small illegal door

with my name misspelled on it.

The poem finds it first.

Then it waits,

barefoot,

ink-mouthed,

disobedient,

until I remember

how to leave.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse - MTB: Ars Poetica Revisited by Grace on June 25th.

[dVerse] June 16th - I was given eight crayons and drew a witness statement.

The first box had eight colors

and no instructions for grief.

Red was for apples, they said,

as if blood had not already invented itself?

Red is:
the notification I still haven't opened,
the lipstick I wore like an alibi,
the danger my mother taught me to notice before language.

Yellow was the sun,

as if jaundice, turmeric, caution tape,

and old gods did not live there too?

Yellow is:
old turmeric under the nail,
a streetlight pretending to protect me,
the cheap brightness of sunshine-flavour optimism sold in bulk.

Blue was for sky, they said,

as if drowning did not also look upward?

As if a bruise was not simply the body

learning how to keep a record?

Blue is:
some say, sadness,
but it's not sadness exactly,
it's the bruise of learning grammar to write the wounds.

Green was for grass, they said,

as if envy had not already rented a room

inside the chest?

As if mold did not know

how to make a home of what was abandoned?
Green is:
mold on the thing you meant to become,
and moss on others who became that thing.

Black was for night, they said,

as if night were the worst thing

a room could become?

As if absence had no color

until we were made to sit inside it?

Black is:
not death, but the room after everyone says “move on.”

Give me the broken crayon,

the one without a wrapper,

the one no child can name.

I will use it

to draw the door

and then misbehave my way through it.

 

~ Oizys.

 

Written for dVerse - Get Out Your Crayons and Come Color with Me! on June 16th, 2026. 

[dVerse] May 19th - This Is Not a Walk

This Is Not a Walk
after Chagall’s La promenade

Marc Chagall, La promenade (The Promenade) (1918), oil on canvas

This is not a woman flying.
This is not a man holding the wrist of his weather.
This is not love,
though love is often accused of such public misconduct.

The green beneath them is not a field.
It is not obedience pretending to be grass.
It is not the ancestral courtyard where daughters learn how low the sky can be.

The houses are not houses.
They are not witnesses with their windows buttoned shut.
They are not relatives leaning out to ask where she is going
in that dress,
with that body,
with that much altitude.

The bouquet is not a bouquet.
It is not apology.
It is not proof that romance has completed its paperwork.

The small red church is not a church.
It is not permission.
It is not the office where joy must apply
for a identity certificate,
salary slip, father’s signature,
and two passport-size photographs.

And he—the man on the ground—
is not a saviour.

Let us be clear.

He is not gravity.
He is not ownership.
He is not the nail holding her blue hem to the village map.

He is only a hand still surprised to be trusted.

She is not escaping.
She is not performing lightness for the museum wall.

She is what happens when the body remembers
it was never a cupboard,
never a locked room,
never the careful daughter
folded into the good bedsheet.

Above them, the sky
is not blue.
It is not sky.
It is a loophole.

And the air—that shameless clerk—
has misplaced every form
that once required her
to stay.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Don’t box me in: Chagall by Melissa Lemay on May 19, 2026.

[dVerse] May 18th - safety through ugliness

safety through ugliness

the phone cover sheds
its tired skin
while I eat
a sandwich late.
hunger sits beside me,
loyal as a dog,
waiting for the command
to leave.
I say stay.
it stays.
I say live.
it looks away,
like I am asking too much.

~ Oizys.

Word count: 44
Written for dVerse Quadrille #248 – This One’s Gone to the Dogs By whimsygizmo on May 18, 2026.

[dVerse] May 15th - Inventory for Staying Alive in Public

One safety pin fastened to the inside of a wobbly long top.
One phone charged to 63%, which is not enough, but is treated like faith.
One friend who knows the cab number, the driver’s name, the route, and the exact hour to begin worrying.
One lipstick that has outlived three men and two versions of the self.
One packet of tissues.
One packet of lies: I’m almost there. / My brother is waiting outside. / I don’t live alone. / I have already sent your photo.
One key held between fingers like an ancestral weapon nobody officially taught us.
One mother’s voice stored in the body: sit properly, come home early, do not argue with strangers, do not become a story people tell in lowered voices.
One father’s silence after the screams folded into the wallet like an old receipt for a life nobody returned.
One group chat named something harmless where women exchange weather reports on men, streets, bosses, landlords, family functions, and which uncle not to sit beside.
One chocolate bar for blood sugar, rage, or the sudden need to remain human.
One screenshot.
One backup screenshot.
One joke made too quickly so fear does not get ideas.
One scarf adjusted, not for modesty, just for strategy.
One woman at the bus stop making eye contact with another woman and becoming, briefly, anti-establishment infrastructure.
One memory of being told not to make a scene.
One scene, kept ready.
One small private terror that the city is not the cage, only the corridor outside it.
One small private terror that leaving home might not mean leaving inheritance.
One small private terror that I have not left home; I have only learnt to carry it more quietly. I have only become more portable.
One recurring thought while waiting for the lift, the salary, the apology, the visa, the miracle: what if this is not a phase but the whole arrangement?
One small, stubborn tenderness: the little girl on the bus offering her seat to someone more tired than herself.
One performative prayer, not to be protected, but to arrive without having to become stone.
One ordinary evening.
One ordinary survival.
One ordinary woman unlocking her door, removing her earrings, and entering her own name again.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Meeting the Bar: Unlock with lists, hosted by Björn Rudberg on Thursday, May 14th, 2026. The prompt asked us to use lists in poetry as structure, metaphor, inventory, negation, expansion, or simply as a way to begin. This is a list poem. Also a handbag audit. Also, unfortunately, a syllabus.

[dVerse] May 12th - A Room that Misremembers its Windows

A Room that Misremembers its Windows

In the stitched room,
the window does not promise escape.

The window is not open.
The window is performing openness.

It offers a square of green
held in place by patient lines.

Outside, perhaps, there is weather.
Inside, mother's old cloth has taken over
the duties of wall, curtain, garden, memory.

Behind its green ribs,
a pot of flowers rehearses spring
in a room that has never trusted weather.

The flowers keep their colour
without asking the sun’s permission.

Two red leaves have fallen
where nobody invited autumn in.

A red leaf comes and rests near the threshold
like a thought someone dropped
and did not return for.

I stand before this room
and think of all the places
that were called safe
because they had doors.

This is how houses confess:
not by speaking,
but by loosening a seam,
staining a corner,
letting one curtain sag
after years of being looked through.

A seam is not a wound, exactly.
It is the record
of two torn edges
agreeing, for now,
to remain together.

I touch the wall.
It gives slightly.

It does not fall.
It does not forgive.

Never collapses.
Never surrenders.

Only the smallest admission
that even brick grows tired
of being called shelter.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Poetics Tuesday: What art says, hosted by paeansunplugged on Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. The prompt asked us to write a poem inspired by one of the shared artworks by Indian artists, letting the art speak without further explanation. I chose:

“A Room that Breathed in Stitches” by Sabiha Dohadwala.

[dVerse] May 11th - The Bird Did Not Fly

The Bird Did Not Fly

By Tuesday morning, the cage had learned my name. It said it softly, in Ma’s voice, from the kitchen window where the caged parrot hung beside the basil. I had returned after twelve years, with a suitcase and no husband, which in our lane was worse than arriving with a corpse. Ma made tea. The parrot scraped its beak against the brass bars. “You can sleep in your old room,” she said, as if mercy had furniture. I opened the window. Outside, the night jasmine leaned in, reckless, fragrant, almost free. And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— into the room, into the cage, into my lungs. The bird did not fly when I opened the latch. Neither did I. We only looked at each other, ashamed of our training.

~ Oizys.

Word count: 131
Written for dVerse Prosery — Paul Laurence Dunbar, hosted by Dora on May 11, 2026. The prompt asked us to write a piece of prose fiction in 144 words or fewer, using the line from Dunbar’s Sympathy: “And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—” This is fiction. Mostly. The cage is innocent until proven hereditary.

[dVerse] May 7th - The Fog Has My House Keys

The Fog Has My House Keys

The fog comes in
like it has been here before.

Not dramatically.
No doorbell.
No throat-clearing at the gate.
No screaming.
No door-slamming.

Just a soft trespass
over the balcony railing,
through the laundry clips,
past the basil plant
that has seen too much
and says nothing.

By midnight,
the buildings lose their surnames.

The streetlights become
small government offices
processing applications
for disappearance.
Outside, men in uniform guide
dispossession in a line.

Even the stray dog
below my window
forgets his argument
with the moon.

I stand there,
holding a cup of tea
gone cold from wilful neglect,
and watch the world
misplace itself politely.

There is mercy in this. (Please...)

How kindly the fog
edits the city,
removing sharp edges,
pending bills,
unanswered messages,
the exact shape
of my own face
in the glass.

For a few minutes,
I am not required
to be clear.

Not daughter.
Not employee.
Not woman definitely.
Not a worker
with a calendar full
of practical weather.

Only breath.

Only blur.

Only some small animal
passing through the chest,
quiet-footed,
unclaimed,
already leaving.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Open Link Night #407. Inspired by their given optional mini prompt from Carl Sandburg’s Fog, especially the line “The fog comes on little cat feet.”

[dVerse] May 5th - Names I Did Not Answer To

Names I Did Not Answer To

By midnight,
all my old selves had gathered
outside the locked door.

Restless came first,
barefoot, carrying a suitcase
full of unsent apologies.

Then Ebb Tide,
who knew exactly
when to leave a room
and make it look
like drowning.

Desdemona wore white,
not for innocence,
but because grief stains better
on honest cloth.

No Surrender laughed
from the staircase,
mouth full of thunder,
heart full of municipal paperwork.

I almost opened the door.

But Peace arrived late,
as usual,
with cold hands
and no explanation.

Behind her,
White Wings folded themselves
into the corridor light.

And for once,
none of my names
asked to be forgiven.

They only stood there,
breathing,
as if survival
was also a kind
of fragrance.

~ Oizys.

Used prompt names: Restless, Ebb Tide, Desdemona, No Surrender, Peace, White Wings
Avoided word: rose
Written for dVerse Poetics - “Names of the Rose,” May 5, 2026. The prompt asked us to use at least five names from a list of rose varieties, without using the word “rose.”
Linky widget expired by the time I could post it. Hope someone sees it. Someone reads it.

[dVerse] May 4th - Bloom: Filed Under Pending

Bloom: Filed Under Pending

Tuesday arrived late,
wearing Monday’s floral badge.

I opened the prompt
like unpaid mail.

Inside: bloom.

Garden bloom? No.
Obedient marigold? No.

More like fungus
on old grief:
tender, suspicious,
still choosing light

from the damp corner
where I had filed
myself under
pending.

~ Oizys.

Word count: 44
Written for dVerse Quadrille Monday: “Come Bloom With Me!!!” May 4, 2026.