The Red Canvas

By Ishika Aggarwal

Crouched in her favourite corner,
Her bruised knees to her scarred forehead,
One hand tucked her ashy, unkempt hair behind her ear
Whilst the other shook frantically,
Clutching onto her dripping heart.

Bloodstains were her skin
The canvas she bled onto, her being.
The canvas she’d berserkly bare open her chest for,
The painting she so desperately longed to complete,
Lay drenched crimson red.

The lavender, the yellow, the pinks,
Had succumbed to the mighty dark of the red,
The thick, smothering, incessant red,
Oozing out from every inch of her being,
Ebbing away every ability to curve those purple lips up.

The lilacs she painted in elementary,
The sunset she chased on her first bike,
The cherry blossoms that became the muse to her first poem,
Once entrapped in her naïve smiles,
Now drowned in the salinity of uncertainties of desire.

Shriveled in the echoes of her sobbing self,
Staggering and stumbling over her beating heart,
Now imprinted onto the canvas,
Only too inconspicuous for the unaided eye,
Too tangible for those masked with tears.

The blood had escaped the canvas,
Stained the paintbrushes scarlet,
Oozed back into the cuts embellishing her wrists,
Dyed her lips and cheeks bright red,
With her own scent of self.

Every piece of her skin she’d stripped off
To bare her true self in a desire for love,
Every drop of blood that she lost to the obscured,
Painted her very own loved existence
Onto the red canvas of self.