The Moon In Her Eyes

By Soumya Doralli

One day she smells of white jasmine,

freshly plucked from the squelchy garden,

the ornate arrangement of her dreamy raven-hair

cascading over her slender shoulders

holds my gaze, and as she peers through 

the misty glass that reflects the faint-violet

glow of the steel-grey sky, and as I gaze

at the moon in her eyes, my heart skips

a beat, and something in me moves perhaps

a vague emotion running round and round,

and I seek a way out of the twirl in my head,

out of the cold, the dark, the sickness.

She feigns a smile as if the place which she

calls her abode has plastered it permanently on her.

Oblivious to the fact that I am studying her

as a subject of great admiration, she beckons 

me in. I look left and right evading the eye

contact, a cackle bursts out of her throat that

sends a tremor in my veins and enthralled by 

her prolonged stare, with the tide within me 

experiencing the ebb and flow, I rise to my feet. 

The raging tempest outside is nowhere

close to the whirl within me. 

The black veil is just there as if the whole

night is sucked into it, that she keeps herself

safe in its folds and creases, that she doesn’t 

catch a cold from the creepy chill, that and

lot more if she lets me ruminate. She shifts

her clinking metal bangles, one, two, three,

never all of them, and with that I give in to

the urge of having her. 

I do not know what shade of pink painted her

moist lips, I do not know if her kohl-rimmed eyes

were deeper than what I felt for her,

I do not know if the fragrance of the 

jasmine took me to the moon or some

place unfathomable, I do not know if the silent

tears in her eyes found their worth. All I know

is that the distance between the brothel and my 

wildly beating heart that until now was miles

apart is now only as wide as her artless smile. 

By Soumya Doralli