To You (More Letters To The Fire)

By Bhavishya

Unsullied grace, a circlet of hope and pining. The gold perfectly framed by wild, wild green so dark it could be a forest night. The gold blushing through thresholds to meet distant seas; to land kisses on veins, this pulse of our days. Silken it sinks soft into dreams, with the scent of a secret in my skin. You traipse around shadows, lithe, and crown folklore through the mist.

Golden you melt like a song on my lips. Carry me from here, taut breath of the spring. As gold as the armour that you’ve taken off. As gold as the dusting on this paradise of walls. Golden were the bedposts I traced with your fingers. And so were the words that stumbled to life, and so the truth-testing furnace. The gilt bearing of nobility when it wins, I have since learnt to hate. For guilt was the price it cost this soldier to pray.

You have painted me blue. And this with a hint of you is what the dawn flaunts, my dear.

BLUE (is it love if there is no sorrow?)

He’s blue like the sky with ashen clouds dropping dead on my porch. Vast and full and out of reach. Blue like the ink that runs from my well till it dries on the land of no mercy. I hear fountains gushing then wake in ruins marked with fault lines. His blue I carry in the palm of my hands and do nothing but stare as it flits away to another broken home. He is the blue that can fill up your lungs and leave you dragging in air for more, because the taste was fleeting and most of it missed your tongue. He is the silent blue like the tears after the screams.

He is also blue like the ribbons around my letters, coming undone to do only the same. So very pale it is almost not. He is blue like the frame of my glasses that I never wear but will never be rid of. He is the blue I seek to summon with every word on my scripts, and he is the blue I curse when I find. Blue at the heart of the flame, grazing the red but only so long. The blue so subdued but knows what it can do. And this blue steals a horizon, no darkness, no light. This blue is the abyss that can hold my delusions, claimed me long before it claimed him.

Blue were his smile and day and we matched for a second there. Then the sun set. Blue was the night when ships passed each other, and blue were the nights after. Blue, I draped around myself, with crescent touches and fading red. Blue was the only promise you never broke, and blue was the courage in me to take the ropes. Blue was the light that kept this alive, and blue was the breath that snuffed out the light.

RED (to those weary of strings)

She is cloaked in black and white but I notice the red, like a couple beats skipped. Red as roses in the season of briars. Red like the rising sun. It washes away better than seas, but redder is her smile. Red as youth and passion and other burning things, dimmed at times but never dying. Red like the heart of the earth, azure or gold on the surface, but the core is fire. Red like the day refusing to be slept through, red like the speeding night. She is time slipping away, leaving red at its wake.

She is also red like the aging charm that keeps dust from my shelf. What brought me her and keeps me away. Red is the shade I cannot see her decked in. She is red like the flush of a love long gone. Stubborn and heated and relentless. Scarlet are the letters she flaunts, the letters that will haunt us. We only cage pieces of each other in words. Red is the true shade of a flame, edging the blue when it can’t stay. This red is soft, melts into my eyes, but it knows to be cruel. And this red is the caress of a nail, a crimson dream on replay.

Red were the lights on the road and we crossed paths there a second time. We kept coming back because there was no one to keep count. Red were the lighthouse walls with streaks of white, all vanished in a blinding haze. Red like my throat holding back a scream, hands in my hair, eyes shut. Red was the flightless daze. I stopped trying as if I knew no words that could stand to win. Red were the lines around your eyes when I saw you again, the last time. Red runs my regret that I never called you mine.

By Bhavishya