Selected Poetry by Anshritha Rai

Photo Source: PxHere

What never was

As I lie in my bed on another relentlessly harsh day,

I think about you, your soft touch, your warm smile,

Your kind eyes, your gentle words, your pure self,

How you make me feel like I could never feel lonely.

While I brush a pink petal of a flower with my fingertips,

I think of the chilly evening we huddled close together,

Warming each other’s tender bodies, speaking of dreams,

You had clasped my hand and looked deep in my eyes,

To say that with you, I would always be safe - it was true.

As I walk on a tired street with music playing in my head,

I think of how you bridged a gap of my roaring emptiness,

You set me free from a human condition I was trapped in,

Holding me amidst the hollering din of this howling void.

We glided hand in hand, crawling toward the bright light.

While I sit outside my crumbling home, inside and out,

I think about the both of us, we were blue and green,

Who is to even say which is which and who is who?

I think about you who never existed and never will,

I think about things that never were and never will be,

I think of a make-believe world I find myself in and smile.

Hands

Some hands never

know how to stay still,

They’re what I call

hungry, exploring hands.

They wander -

from neck to waist to thighs,

So quickly, they’re always

just out of reach.

They’re warm hands,

gentle and knowing,

They make flowers

out of overused paper.

They disassemble

every piece of a puzzle,

And skillfully put it all

back together quickly.

So that’s what these hands are, I think,

Capable of taking things apart, like me,

Only to reassemble the pieces adroitly.

Such soothing hands are rare, I’m certain,

But worth clasping for however short a time.

Life gives me lemons

My angst in not a grey-black cloud,

it is a bright yellow one overhead.

The yellow of an unruly sunflower

standing alone in a yellow meadow,

beaten down by the yellow heat

of the merciless yellow sun scorch.

I would furtively pick yellow lemons

from a neighboring yard as a child.

I suspect life may have misunderstood,

for ever since those truant days,

life sweetly

hands over sour yellow lemons to me

and I am now vexed by all the lemonade.

Anshritha grew up reading books and views the world through a lens of fiction. Her experience with storytelling began when she was five and was asked where the box of chocolates disappeared.