The blog hath risen from its slumber! As I have had some free time over the Spring Break, I managed to scribble down this poem. This is inspired by some of my recent reading: Shakespeare’s ‘Marriage of True Minds’ and Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Valentine’.
For my parents
Not rose petals or a satin heart:
their love is like a painter’s tissue.
Once it was a wispy, fragile creature
It’s fibres shrivelling and blooming under
the water’s first touch.
And now, they still clasp the fibres taut
as inks leap off the painter’s brush
in cobalt blue and onyx black
vermillion red and salmon pink,
Rushing along ridges of fabric,
Penetrating veins surging in from all sides,
Colours colliding and swirling and snaking…
Trying their weathered hands.
Like my grandparents before them, I know they will hold on
Even as their muscles become dried, thick acrylic
And the fibres fray and disintegrate into
wispy, soft sepia.
Keep reading and readjoicing,
Shreya
Paradise Prose Blog 