She is made up of scars,
Hidden with the skin of elegance,
She is a captive,
To others' perception of her own fallacies.
She is made up of bruises,
Knitted with the yarn of invasion,
Her eyes reflect the burning agony,
She is the flowing torrent.
She is made up of blemishes,
Concealed with layers of optimism,
She is made up of bewitching beauty;
A crude exposure.
She is an enticing amalgamation of-
Rain and blizzard,
Oceans and waterfalls,
Breeze and vacuum,
She is a world of paradoxes,
Sealed with an air of rigidity.

- Kavya Mukhija

The other day when you told me that
You had ran out of the inspiration
To write anymore,
I stood holding the mirror in front of you
While you stood there,
Just blankly gazing at the shiny silver screen
Oblivious of how to search for something inspiring
In the scrapes of something so obvious.
I still stood there holding the mirror
Though the pain in my arms had now
Crawled up to the cliff of my shoulders.
I saw your riveting beauty across
The oceanic stretches of your mushy skin
The crevices that made imperfect turns and curves
The layers of hair that sat on the plateau of your shoulders,
Occasionally peeking in from behind the ears
Or even the plump lips of yours
With the tectonic cracks that flaunted the brown musk.
The inspiration sat hidden in between
The stretch marks and the stress marks
Inside the pimples or even
In between the chubby folds of your being.
My mom used to say when I stood in front of the mirror
Just like you are standing now, with a downward curve of your lips
And shoulders that are drooping at the lowest
That, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder
And now that she is long gone, I reciprocate her words to you, swapping beauty with inspiration.
The world remains the same, it's the perception that takes a leap,
Just like a story comes to life when told by a dramatic teller,
The usual springs to life when looked at with eyes searching for inspiration.

- Kavya Mukhija

i. The world is burning.
A little above the place that
Seeks the greatest blessing of the sun,
It is burning with grenades and bombs
Flying around like table tennis *****
With children sleeping to the lullaby
Of their parents'cries.

ii. The world is burning.
A little far away from my house
Around the nook of the street
A group of humans are fighting
They're burning and getting burnt
The fire consumes their body
And the ego their soul.

iii. So when I asked mom to
Go to that nook that reeks of fire crackers
To buy the ice cream blue lagoon,
She kept staring at me
The way she would whenever I'd ask for too much.
I showed her the red colour thread that she had forcefully tied around my neck
Because she had said that it would protect me all the time
I kept waiting for her to utter a word
But she didn't say anything
And I didn't go
To the place that was burning.

iv. I saw on TV the flames that hugged the top of the houses
And danced on scooters
Making them blacker than charcoal,
Near my house at the corner of the street.
There were bodies on the street,
Frozen like sleeping statues.
They had those threads
Wound around their hands and necks
Not one but tens of them.

v. It's night time now.
I sleep hugging her
As tightly as my fragile muscles permitted.
The coldness of her body tingles my fingertips
And the roughness stings.
There are noises of people arguing
In the background.
But I,
I don't care.
Because they're burning the world
And my world is already burnt.

- Kavya Mukhija

The lullaby you used to sing,
Still echoes in my ears.
It sticks with me on nights when I wake up terrified
From a nightmare too horrific than any Annabelle sequel,
And caresses my hair
It's touch calming down every cell of my body.
And when on nights I become too scared
By the unusual howls coming from across the road,
Your lullaby like the command fed into the computer,
Continues to straighten the creases on my forehead,
With the love that pours from your voice.
The syllables fall from your lips like pearls
Weave a necklace of confidence
And hang it around my neck.
The song you used to sing has been stuck in my mind
Like the strongest adhesive,
Simultaneously joining the torn pieces of my soul.
And when on some nights I sleep well,
I dream of you,
Rocking me to sleep in your lap,
Singing the lullaby you used to sing.

- Kavya Mukhija