There's Something in the Woodwork

Ananya Pandey

Hi I'm Ananya, I am so excited to have the opportunity to share my poetry, I was published in Issue 40 of Bricolage and would love another chance to be showcased amongst other talented and imaginative work from the UW community. I love to creatively write, and after coming out of a writer's block, it has been my favorite way to pass the time as of late. My first piece is a poem called "There's Something in the Woodwork" which I was inspired to write after trying mushrooms for the first time, when I saw some really interesting and weird stuff in the furrows and grooves of the trees. This poem feels "quilted" as it depicts glimpses and fragments of a psyche that are not fully revealed, but still paint a picture of its nature and essence. My second poem is called "One Another", which highlights the quilted paradox of love and desire: their ability to both nourish and consume, to heal and destroy. There is a duality between fulfillment and loss, and presence and absence that are quilted together in this poem. I hope you enjoy my work, and thank you for your time.

There’s something in the woodwork
Look closely, you can see
There’s something in the woodwork
I think it may have something to do with me.

There’s something in the woodwork
Come over, if you dare
It seems to be where shadows lurk
And the depths of my despair.

There’s something in the woodwork
Seeping from the furrows
I feel the urge to shirk!
And dissemble in the burrows

There’s something in the woodwork
I dread there’s no escape
From thoughts that make my mind berserk
And turn my mouth agape

There’s something in the woodwork
I’ve no choice but to face
My mind, it tends to overwork
As my thoughts outrun their pace

There’s something in the woodwork
At last, I must accept
It happened just like clockwork
I laughed, I screamed, I wept

There’s something in the woodwork
Depths beyond my reach
There’s something in the woodwork
My mind it shall beseech

One Another

Do scarlet fires prolong deep in the chambers of One’s heart?
To be the object of desire is to be burnt
but to desire is to be incinerated

Somewhere, in the cosmos, a soul is born
Erected from infinity, fission
In the vastness
the two geminate spirits freefall
into Collision
A blaze sparks

Familiarity is attained in quiet correspondence
echolocation
With love comes the solace
of One’s essence,
Tended to in Another’s palms
But with pining comes the grief
of losing One’s essence,
as it weaves with Another’s

Flames of incessant yearning lick up
into calamity
Only two hearts can alleviate the longing
of which one heart pulses with

So when crimson hues dwindle
All life that remains
appears to be drained and lusterless
The layers peel away
Where One can see how deep they were seared
Under the enormity of their desire

But below embers and scars and wreckage
lies something tangible

Two hearts thrumming off the most dominant force;
One Another

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