By Soumya Doralli
She looks for the traces of home
in memories as she wades through
a labyrinth of emotions that
distances her from herself.
It is hard to know which sharp turn
would lead home that a bride
calls her own. Swinging her arms,
clutching her pleats to jump off
a puddle of dreams, she’s all decked up
to meet her groom eye to eye.
She smells of fresh jasmine as the rain
washes away the scent of her loneliness
and plasters her oceanic smile over the
shores of her scarlet cheeks.
It is true she is destined to reign
only two blocks away from home
after that even her own body
cringes with fear of losing her
name in the wild wild mess of
a world, in the din of self-conceited
utterances. To be her self in these
lanes is to invite stings and stares
and murmurs that don’t die away.
A moment of silence is like a triumph
falling short of itself,
a moment of pause is like a half-
hearted drizzle over a patch of grass,
yet she craves for it as the
moments pass her by.
Since the time she had been sheltered
under a roof of support and care, she
spilled her ladle of love and wiped
the blotches of hate knowing her
heart could afford only so much.
She asked her mother why was she
giving her up when her chest was
heaving with pain and tears were
sliding off her drooping shoulders?
She nodded to the silence that ensued
thinking words were expensive to be
uttered and claiming her part of the
world was a taxing task.
When she was unwilling to tie the knot
she hesitated to let her voice suffer
being heard but not attended to, for she
had given up on so many of her
fantasies that couldn’t mirror the reality.
She had stolen a feather once from
a spool of barbed wire. She knew then
she mistook the feather to be a fledgling
thinking it would take flight, far, up and
away into the seamless skies but it sat
there on her lap like a little lifeless
thing infusing life in her for life
wouldn’t turn its face away from her.
She had a choice now that is if she
ever ever wanted to set herself free
she had to fly beyond the fence
of reason and sing like the birds
twittering in the early early
mornings when the sun is
pulling screens of amber and crimson.
She knows if she sets her eye over the sky,
air underneath and air overhead
sunning her blues and healing her bruises,
at least the sky wouldn’t abandon her.