a poem by Tanvi Nagar
The sweet scented lilies, soup and music
I
We strung together the sweet scented lilac lilies with perfection
and laced the low hanging air of despair with your magical melodies.
The red, blue and green lines on the screens fluctuated freely
tirelessly racing rhythmically- as if creating their own music.
The aroma of light-yellow luscious lamb soup escaped from the bowl
as if racing to reach the titled, square white ceiling first;
II
My glassy eyes, stayed fixed upon the skeleton before me- bones, flesh and a little you,
encased in a coffin of peachy pale skin and numerous twisted tubes;
the incisions in your skin fresh- with little red droplets of blood that oozed out
made my heart beat faster; fluttering like a kite in the sky before its string is cut.
the skin in your hands and feet hung loose and lifeless
which made it harder to imagine how blood was gushing underneath this sheet,
there was so much movement in the molecules of your being
yet, so much stillness in the spirit of your existence.
your eyelids were shut closed, concealing the gateway to your universe within,
like the white sheet that covered the scars the sharp needles left on your body.
III
We strung together the sweet scented lilac lilies with perfection
and laced the low hanging air of despair with your magical melodies.
The red, blue and green lines on the screens fluctuated freely
tirelessly racing rhythmically- as if creating their own music.
The aroma of light-yellow luscious lamb soup escaped from the bowl
as if racing to reach the titled, square white ceiling first;
It was hard to imagine life of a human, so powerful yet dangerously delicate-
hanging on the monitors, meters, measures.
It was still more hard to imagine what pulling the plug from a socket
can do to the one hanging on it like threads of loose cloth ripped at the ends.
IV
The lilac lilies danced in farewell, to some sad song it seemed
the monitors beating slower, slower and slower still
with their constant repeating beat- beep.
the waves resounded and repeated
until the notes on the screen
refused to go up and down
and the fumes from
the soup didn’t
escape at
all.
Tanvi Nagar