to the bitter end

Not all love letters speak of love by Gabriel Grecco

right at the beginning, it seemed
perfectly natural in that light.

with your wine-breath on my skin,
i wondered of the likelihood that
staying is perhaps not so difficult,
that my withered skin could regrow.

it’s been a year since i have dared
to think of love or its urgent utility.
it’s been two decades, only it did be-
-come a compulsion to be caressed
after the teenage-thunderstorm
of desires and obtuse obsessions.

you saw it through and still turned
it empty, whipping my senses into
(dis)belief. at my breaking point,
all that i had to do began&ended
without due rancour or reason.

i cannot begin to trust or bequeath
my faith to another, i do not need
to languish in the arms of dead love.

it’s done&dusted, dusted&done,
after having cut open a chest with
its gum residue and dried blood.

.
© Anmol Arora

Day 12
(Inter)National Poetry Month

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broken sleep

Sleepless / Painting by Joshua Wait

when you are still clutching at
the last few strands of sleep, and
the air is grim with envy for
the shape of your belief,

i want to entomb your fragility
in a mausoleum, made of
that first smile, the last kiss, the dread
of a heart, breaking into wet dirt,

that we scrap from our weary old souls,
after a half-digested need (breath-like)
for the other.

i want to be a tearful-sight, a shadow-
sign of your unfulfilled sleep. i want
to rest against the ghosts of your lies,
till wakefulness pushes me towards
the exit of your dire dreams.

do not rise yet, do not put me down yet.
i want to want once more, before the end.

.
© Anmol Arora

Day 8
(Inter)National Poetry Month

towards the separation of lips

By Brooke Di Donato

the mauve-toned sky picks
and plucks at my love’s languid pace,
turning a shade of brinjal-blue
and carrot-red, as suns and rains
drown each other out, before
Venus’ chariot of callous-crowns —

i have seen kisses in the shapes
of a soft-pink roundness,
(a bulging sourness) of falling grapes,

i have seen lips that go up and up,
and down and down, like a loitering
lover, in search of a finicky warmth
(just to belong) in unrelenting arms,

i have eaten morsels of bodies, drank
myself to the satisfaction of projectile-
juices, (parched in deserts) of skin-types,

i have kissed thighs of another order,
and written psalms of sleep at many
arbors, (struggling) beneath a few
forgetful breaths.

let me sleep now for a second or two,
(for your sake)
before i slip through your lips
and become whole again.

.
© Anmol Arora

For ‘Shortcake, waffles, berries and cream .. February!‘ at With Real Toads, where Sanaa inspires us with a poem by Joseph O Legaspi

winter comforts

the first drops felt like invisible threads
dangling down the sky in swift, translucent
colours, wetting the epidermis of the earth,
in the pattern of an old comforting habit,
worn-out and bare, as a cold wind against
the torn paths of my seldom-used lips.

you felt like a stolen figure of hope —
a sudden departure from white noise
in a vast welcoming gesture of your open
arms, your face flushed in a lightning
roar — your voice grew distant, and yet
your luminous eyes stayed in the dark.

i shared the softness of my limbs, loose
muscles, hollow bones, all the broken scars.

.

© Anmol Arora

Also read, devirginating desire and a twilight story

Linking it up with The Tuesday Platform at With Real Toads, where I am hosting and paying homage to Mary Oliver and David Bowie
Image source (B. Prettau – WINTER RAIN)

 

screwed

the pastel-pink wall looks
slyly

at the degradation of a colourless face,
somewhat shaken

before the rapture of satisfaction.

it is being brandished in this cold
that isn’t cold anymore,
not even in a half-witted lie
of tomorrow’s promise.

who wrote the fate of this hollow face
that it doesn’t fall off
after the eruption?

.

© Anmol Arora

A title with multiple connotations — a short 55-worded verse for Just One Word: Hollow at WTR.
Image source (Pink Sky Abstract by Nancy Merkle)