Shrine

The etiolated petals,

(as fragile as a butterfly’s wings),

a testament to our innocent love

have stained the yellowing pages

of your epistle of love

folded neatly within the leaves of a beloved book

lying next to my bed since you gave it to me

as I run my fingers over the now barely visible lines

my lips move silently to the words imprinted on my soul

but no longer scarring my heart with rapier sharpness

what remains is just a twinge of regret for what could have been

didn’t someone call Time, the healer!

the curve of my smile gets deeper

enfolding within it

our undying devotion to each other

life can be beautiful and brutal by turns

these petals and yellowing pages are the shrine

I turn to during transient tumultuous times.

https://amanpan.com/2021/07/29/eugis-weekly-prompt-petals-july-29-2021/

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Rain song

Rains came gushing, hearing my plea
I hop, I skip, I jump in glee
confines of walls, I quickly flee
Oh to be free, oh to be free!

umbrellas, raincoats make me glum
puddles, paper boats here I come
snivels and sneezes spoil my fun
give me some rum, give me some rum!

I snuggle under the warm sheet
in your arms, close to your heart beat
listening to the rain’s song sweet
feeling complete, feeling complete.

Today’s verse is in monotetra form for Grace’s challenge at dVerse.

Proverbially speaking

Absence makes the heart grow fonder – proverb

The day goes by in painful slow motion

so not unlike the others before

segueing shamefacedly, silhouetted

against the reluctant, recalcitrant night fall

loneliness, my constant handmaiden,

drowns me in a downpour of misery

these days I don’t feel whole anymore

a part of me left with you when you left

I am trying to fathom what part am I missing

is it my hands, which on their own volition seek you

remembering your beloved contours

or my skin that yearns for your touch

now feels starved, parched and dry

my eyes maybe, for they see without seeing

forever wanting to drink your sight

my ears too seem to be straining to hear your voice

its undulating cadence and huskiness

perhaps it is my heart, which though still with me

beats as if against its will

torn in two, it pumps silent tears

and I roam around the home touching things,

drinking them up with my eyes

listening to the silence and telling my heart to beat again

trying hard to be whole in your absence.

Merril at dVerse says, “For this prompt, choose a proverb or a pair of proverbs. Use them as you wish—as an epigraph or within the poem.”

Pain

My eyes are arid these days
tears don’t stream down
as was their wont
the searing pain
scorched them
leaving behind
parchment dryness
my paper cut eyes
bloodshot and dead
stare unseeingly
the residual salt
on my lips tastes of
the wreckage called life.

So, I dip a tentative toe in the dVerse stream.

Written for dVerse quadrille prompt: stream.

Not so supermanly but humanly

Soaring temperatures, sweltering heat
Two lonely old superheroes out on the street
No sign of rain and the infernal capes
Looking for something cooling, whatever it takes!
They spy an ice candy man and shout with guttural glee
Startling the poor man and making him flee
Slurping on the ice cream with obvious relish
Doing foolish things can be so delish!

https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2021/07/26/what-do-you-see-92/

https://amanpan.com/2021/07/22/eugis-weekly-prompt-soaring-july-22-2021/

Manufactured truth

A few thousand dead bodies
some floating face up, some face down
they were just some putrid flotsam
why did they make everyone darkly frown?

People running helter and skelter
desperate for a few lungsful of oxygen
they were already gasping for fresh air
pollution killed them, don’t be so high-strung!

Hundreds of corpses piling in the crematorium
night air filled with deep sobs and choking miasma
natural causes kill people too
this country is surely not a burning hell!

Phones and emails hacked at will
anyone who questions the state is its enemy
why raise such a stink over such allegations
the state is the big brother, ’tis not blasphemy!

Lies, fabrication and exaggeration
are peddled in the west in the name of news
there were no deaths, no paucity of facilities
the government puts forth its official views

Trash all the reports and all the data
suspend disbelief, disengage your brain
believe WhatsApp messages and all the hoardings
your mind should be like the stagnant water of drain.

https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2021/07/22/__trashed/

Vitriol

The whirlwind of his words
though expected, always knocks me down
leaving my knees weak and wobbly
scattering my composure like a bundle of straw
the slurry of alcohol and contumelious derision
pours forth contemptuously
from his frothy, sneering mouth
the tar black viscosity of toxicity
crushes me with the ferocity of a ton of bricks
then dribbles down deep into my denuded heart
corroded and misshapen beyond recognition
creating a stygian worthlessness
tongue tied and petrified, I stand rooted
facing the obnoxious aural onslaught
spleen spent, he staggers away
my timorous soul wrings it hands
bemoaning the lack of courage at disposal
but promising resolution in future
which, in truth, eludes with regularity every time.

https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2021/07/19/what-do-you-see-91/

My fears

My fears lie to me everyday
their perfidious ploys
making me pusillanimous
from the hunter, I become the prey

I forget from naught we came
and to naught we go
in the circle of life
seasons bloom and fade

despair and hope move cyclically
with no concern for orderliness
I hear life calling out
I choose to disregard my fears.

History

“This is insanity”, I shout at her rigid, receding back
her eighteen year old spine
has as much steel as did mine at her age
I curse under my breath
memories of distant past flood my troubled mind

It still lies in the dusty corner cabinet
beneath the silken, floral duvets
hidden and buried deep
but unforgotten
a piece of my past that I cannot erase

ever the rebel, in a fit of anger
to spite my mom
I had coloured my hair fuchsia pink
that one act of madness, of defiant delirium
a show of my cussedness
drove a wedge wide and gaping between us forever

The frostiness of our relationship
has not thawed with time
“Harlot” she had called me then
splintering an already tottering bond
forgiving and forgetting had gone past repair

I don’t want history to repeat itself
nor be the mother my mother was
with resigned footsteps and a forced smile
ruing my own foolhardiness
I make my way to her room.

https://lifeafter50forwomen.com/2021/07/12/what-do-you-see-90-july-12-2021/

https://amanpan.com/2021/07/15/eugis-weekly-prompt-unforgotten-july-15-2021/

https://reinventionsreena.wordpress.com/2021/07/15/reenas-xploration-challenge-190/

Melancholy and hope

Under the cover of rain
melancholy walked in quietly, without even knocking
she shares my room these days

though she came empty handed
she carries a lot of extraneous baggage
my feeble protests do not deter her

strewing pain and guilt around
my eyes she refuses to meet
yet sits on their sleep hungry swollen rims

she forages each nook and cranny
surreptitiously nibbling at the stale remnants of joy for sustenance

she tucks me under the blanket of wretchedness every night
singing a dolorous threnody that keeps me awake
lacing her finger through mine, sitting with a hangdog expression

Hope that lay in an apathetic torpor
within my withered and withdrawn soul
slowly shed sluggishness to become sapient

unable to watch melancholy getting ensconced
she leaves a fragile paper bag through the ajar window
that faintly twinkles with tiny sequins of happiness

my hands, tired of the burden of pessimism
clutch at the sliver of sanguinity
struggling for coherence in existence

I start to stitch haphazard, tiny patterns of joy
melancholy now often skulks in a corner
lethargic and inefficacious in the face of hope.