সন্ধ্যারাগ: The Lipstick

In the used-furniture shop, in a winding lane

Seen through a foggy soulless window pane

A used lipstick that stands on a dressing-table,

With the solitariness of an old, forgotten fable.

Lying by its side a dead cotton ball, having bled

The lipstick wiped congealing to darkening red.

Between them they hide the saddening story

Of a pair of lips that waited for a day of glory

In the long somber winding alleys of oblivion

Buried in the dead shell of memory’s cocoon

Two lips that longed for a moment’s passion

A moment to arrive, for as soon to be gone

An eternity ever, ever, ever so infinitesimal

From the lipstick’s daub to the rub of the ball

What were the lips like to the touch and feel?

Before passion came alive and began to reel.

Were the lips pale, were they thirsty, dry?

Did they look like they would silently die?

Did they anguish in a bitter sweet hope?

Did they tremble from a yearning to elope?

Till lipstick ripened them, two red segments

The colour of the flame of heart’s torments

Bursting, burning in full and succulent bloom

With a rare desire craving for certain doom.

But, the evening came and the evening went

Clocks’ hands ticked to the day’s dead end

Yet no one came by, no one kissed the two lips

All hope within died as a breathless flame dips

The lips fluttered faceless in time’s cobweb

Like a mute drowning with silent cry for help.

Then as if straw, the hands clutched the cotton ball

And having smothered the lips limp let it just fall

Covered in dead blood the cotton ball soon fell

Close to the lipstick, like the fag end of a sorry tale.

Eventually the ball will drift away from the lipstick

Away and away, like a sailor in a wrecked ship sick.

Does a beautiful face, a pair of lips always make?

Or do they bloom, wilt and die in just a kiss’s wake?

সন্ধ্যারাগ