LOLITA SAW A GHOST.

By Shruti Bhattacharya

In my head I have imagined you laugh

twenty different ways, yet I am confused,

exactly which one fits your cheeks

and the tint of your lips,

the baritones of your voice,

and the tingles of my stomach.

Astonishingly I am thinking

all these at an hour so busy

but I, I…

desperately need to think about you

or my head would explode worse than

a jackfruit in summer

and putrid than its smell.

And then I am in front of the mirror,

and I see my tangled hair and my bright eyes;

somehow, I feel you would call me sweet

despite my disheveled state.

You’d clasp me tight in your arms

and I would be gasping; I’d like it too.

Our hands are red and far;

and it’s fine as poetry cause

how they fit together

when we would pretend lovers,

as if it was real and all the eyes knew what we were.

Together we would feed the cats and now,

how they roam around my feet asking for the stains,

tainted, painted,

on my hands the red from your veins.

Body so numb as, heat is only

to receive for last, it held; those hands held you.

Yet,

Tonight, I can see you pale and blue in the reflection,

along with my dolled face, a bun up high;

and hands unstained, manicured in French.

And forgetting everything, I run towards you,

witnessing your existence once again,

despicably trying to haunt this fine afterlife.

But;

You are endless,

and the ghost of everything

I slouched away from;

pulped it into arson

and burned it all.

Yet,

You stand in front of me,

mosaiced in the shades of every good byes I ever swore…

Yet,

You stand in front of me, and I can’t think of you.

True like a corpse,

as I remember you, just as we danced,

every stain like the mulberry spots;

ugly freckles of horror; you are a ghost and a story.

Which I buried, bare, and banned.

Gone, are you!

So, with the smoke of my fireplace,

let me extinguish; all the soul,

that stands dead to me.

And tomorrow when I wake up,

I’ll eat my cereal with bliss,

and breathe my name,

all over this abode;

smiling in Lolita.

By Shruti Bhattacharya