By Aadhya Goswami
And we've been using the same color,
to paint love and anger.
Dipping brushes into the well of our hearts,
splattered crimson on walls,
where passion and fury collide.
Achilles knew this hue well—
a rage so red it stained the sands of Troy,
a love so fierce it mourned Patroclus
with fire and ruin.
Does it matter which fueled him more?
Or that they were the same in the end?
Love shouts.
It screams in the night,
like Heathcliff on the moors,
howling at a sky
too gray to care.
Anger whispers,
like Medea plotting in the shadows,
her heart a tapestry
of betrayal and blood.
They mix, don’t they?
The way a heated kiss
can feel like the edge of a fight,
or how rage
can taste like tears and devotion
when it’s bound to protect.
Are we so different when we’re consumed?
Lovers and warriors both cry out
in defiance, in yearning,
in a language the same color bleeds.
Red.
The mark of Dido’s pyre,
her love turned ash beneath Aeneas’ indifference.
Red.
For the roses Dante wove through Beatrice’s name,
or the flames he promised his enemies.
Red.
For Juliet’s final sigh,
the knife and the kiss,
and the maddening blur
between death and devotion.
And maybe, just maybe,
that’s the tragedy,
or the beauty of it—
that love and anger
share the same paintbrush,
that they blur the edges
of what we mean,
when we mean something
so fiercely
it cannot stay quiet.
And, here we are,
palette in hand,
coloring our lives in shades of red.
Loving.
Fighting.
Existing.
Unsure if the marks we leave
heal or scar.
By Aadhya Goswami
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