Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 Jan 2018 Shradha Rai
C E Ford
"You look like love,"
she said one night,
cold with the
whispers of winds
on old cobblestone
and hushed
footsteps
of snow-covered
boots.

He stopped
in his tracks,
the cherry of
his cigarette
pulsing
like the colors
of a spinning
satellite
lightyears away
from their newly-found
lives.

"What does love
look like?"
he asked,
syllables hanging
close to his face,
blue eyes
darting
from her lips
to her hands
and back again.

But he knew.
He knew from the first
time he shook her hand
and saw the
sweat glisten off her
brow,
and listened to her
listless stories
of how summer
never truly loved her,
that one day
he truly would.

She smiled,
lips cracking
from the dry air,

"It looks like an
overflowing sink,
fresh with bubbles
from soapy dishwater
left unattended
to waltz in the kitchen.

It looks like ice
cracking
to the sweet smoke
of scotch
and the divot
on the couch that
sinks our thighs
and the thought
of any afternoon plans
deep
in crevasses
we're both too sleepy
to crawl out of.

It looks like all
the things
the world
took from me
and promised
it would never give back,
but instead packaged
in a
candle
bright enough
to illuminate
all the dark places
and remind me
that even though
others have treated me
like a
flicker,
I'm truly a
flame."
Love poetry is hard, but this came out easy.
 Jan 2018 Shradha Rai
Mims
Poetry
 Jan 2018 Shradha Rai
Mims
I don't even care what it says
just as long as it's out of my head
My words somehow manage to
wrap themselves in your essence.
I no more wonder why they seem
so beautiful to me. always.
We seldom call Autumn
beautiful. or never.
Because things worn out
and even blossoms fall down.
There's dryness all over. right ?
What if the Autumn is in love with soil.
and to heal its wounds,
Autumn puts flowers on it.
There's dryness all around
for autumn mourns on
the dead part of soil.
It's not always about beauty.
It's about feelings. sometimes.
I've imagined
forever. always
under your veil.

Eternity somewhat
similar to you.
always.

And now. after you.
I have stopped.
talking about them.

       -(forever. a myth)
Burnt toast and
a spot of blood.

Father dresses for work
and leaves with a wave,
his gabardine suit
the exact same shade
as the storm cloud blooming
on the back of his left hand.

After breakfast, mother pins
his undershirts to the wash line,
clothespins clenched
between broken teeth.

From my upstairs window,
I watch his shirts stiffening
in the flinty December air,
a chorus of white flags,
obsequious and clean.

Mother recovers in the laundry room,
where the floor is dusted with feeble
grains of spilled detergent.

I spend the afternoon
preparing for the sound
of tires crunching on gravel,
for the sweep of headlights
across the lawn.

There are plans
and maneuvers
to arrange.

Counterattacks.

Even now, the snow
on the side of the road

has turned to the color
of my childhood.

— The End —