She Wore A Marigold In Her Hair

By Dr Smita Anand Sriwastav

She wore a marigold in her hair -the country bumpkin amongst flowers its artless, summery grin trying to add a sparkle to her fickle pansy smiles. Once she'd worn orchids braided in those silken depths in exotic swirls of perfumed poetry, when herself a lyrical sigh gazing at life with wide almond-eyed naiveté. She is a fistful of words that she sings in fractured lines, her croon a stilted echo of the obsolete its fragments glued by self-concocted phrases~ just to hear vestigial vocal cords croak out strings of hollowed syllables.

Her existence bracketed between grocery lists and petty dinner table woes, whistled urgency of cooked meals the only noise bursting into her daydreams, she whispers comforting words to herself just to fill the emptiness that yawns betwixt clothesline trysts in the sunshine and sleepy lullabies crooned to the howling crib at midnight, while her fragile sleep is oft lulled by snored indifference. Love is like wallpaper carefully chosen and then just existing~ a dried rose once treasured within sepia pages of mottled reverie. It is revived at times in echoed smiles or a softly whispered peck on eroded cheeks- a firefly kissing fate-lines on palm before twilight loses its transient grasp on acrylics and night intervenes...

By Dr Smita Anand Sriwastav