Holi Hues Are My Fragments

By Anisha Gupta

Neela Rang (Blue Colour) 

I mulched my dreams into a cerulean hue,

Picked the fragile-mirrored foam like berries from the sky.

Crushed, into the mortar with pestle and pea butterfly. 

- Incomplete dreams

Laal Rang (Red Colour)

A palm-sized thornbush grows in our verandah crack, I was a kid back at 5.

Tracing the generational upheaval in my blood lines.

Brushing the cheek on the floor to find myself adjacent to the bush.

I chewed my only world, pricking my mouth to a garnet lush.

- Swallowed trauma down the line

Hara Rang (Green Colour)

The more sunlight I started seeking,

Them the seedlings sprouted on the home in me,

And the days it rained red a little bit too much,

I let my skin sink in bed,

Some limelight plants drowned in me- coloured my mind in green dread.

- Like periods like moods

Peela Rang (Yellow Colour)

I gave a side-eye hanging on the wobbly railings,

To my mother jerking my pale cousins off them.

I was drenched in sweat from all that hate; I mean heat.

She left me pulling up the bar,

Just so I could learn some lessons,

And forbid bruising my body of turmeric sins.

-White clothes on the line

Gulabi Rang (Pink Colour)

He planted a kiss on my cheeks

While juicing the cherry in his left palm.

A turn of pale blue flush on his face,

As I rubbed a healthy relation on his wounds;

He took my forever leave with a smoothie bowl in his hands.

He cracked open my cheeks pouring out blush-a souvenir from his fangs.

- His Mischievous love

By Anisha Gupta