Poetry Corner
you could have just said it to my face.
Vedika Awtani
i shall not award you the satisfaction of declaring you my enemy,
no, i should rather describe you as the personification of never-ending misery,
as you fire shots of evasion in a labyrinth around me,
i wonder if you notice your crocodile tears are not currency.
even the minutes dash away when they perceive the look of guilt on your face,
as your sugar-coated venom seeps into the disfigured parts of my brain,
instantly, i am a pawn in your game,
and your words of envy spread through me like cracks in a glass plate.
shards of malice pierce through the nooks of your person,
and if you render this friendship i must be missing something,
no friend of mine would paint me in such despair,
as if the charcoal you planted in my heart wasn’t already too much to bear.
oh, dear, have i finally started echoing the narcissism in your language?
i know my conformity hasn’t made the stabs of your knife any more delicate,
but sometimes i wonder if your apathy breeds more of the same,
because maybe then i could escape the suffocating inferno of your blazing pain.
August’s Anger
Maryam Raheel
It was too early for the strawberries to go out of season,
By August the farms had depleted their stock of the fruit.
I hadn’t touched them all summer, yet the house reeked of their scent,
The days were hot and heavy and swollen with sunshine,
Full of the compulsion to drench my hands in sugared water,
Because if I didn’t, August would chew on my numb limbs,
And spit out the pale flesh like watermelon seeds,
Leaving me to gnaw on rubbery rinds of regret.
The heat will burn my promise to get it right next time,
The way it dried up the garden and dehydrated my grass,
I will sink my teeth into summer’s sweetness, choke on cherry pits,
Wash my hair with lemon juice and eat ice cubes for lunch.
Next time, August will watch me sit at the bottom of a pool,
Absorb chlorine into my tissues till wrinkles decorate my body,
To avoid the bitter bite of each wasted day from indenting my skin.
Tear Drop
Joy Pius
What a fool I was to make you my moon.
High tide, the sea at the bottom of my eyes rising.
With each thought of what could have been knowing what is,
a fresh stream flows.
Following the path created by the weightless promises you made.
Streams find their way to the valley between the soft mountains.
Salty, taste of time wasted.
Others flow to the rim of twin volcanoes.
The aroma of heartache.
The rest have no destination,
murdered by the heat from ground.
What am I to do, when the earth
cannot exist without
the moon?
