Of Love and Anger

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