Tomorrow is a girl at the back of the class.
You never notice she’s there until she asks questions that nobody knows the answer to.
She wore her hair in a ponytail on Tuesday.
Thursday, she shaved her head.
She’s very unpredictable that way.
 
On days that she’s not alone in the halls,
Tomorrow walks hand-in-hand with Hope.
Hope has a contagious smile, but the day you forget to call out to her,
She disappears and doesn’t return until you look for her, for Tomorrow’s sake.
Tomorrow looks empty without Hope.
 
She sits between Future and Fortune but Fortune favors Bold,
So, she doesn’t mind shifting her seat sometimes.
 She doesn't like Past, blames him for all her problems just to shield herself from guilt.
Tomorrow is stubborn when wrong in an argument,
She doesn’t listen to what anyone has to say, holds grudges and scowls at mistakes.
 
On Sundays, she likes to talk to everyone about everything,
But as soon as Saturday comes around, she’s upset that nothing ever goes her way.
Tomorrow is insecure; she hears people whisper about her in hushed tones,
As if they expect her to run away. They don’t know that she likes it here, she wants to stay.
 
She doesn’t know this, but everyone likes her best.
Sure, people love getting emotional with Past and almost everyone is best friends with Today,
But Tomorrow is whose company we all look forward to at the end of the day.
 
When Past said he’s going to move out of town,
He told Today to visit often.
And when Today was away visiting,
Tomorrow would take his seat, and Future took hers.
And when Time made a relatively funny joke in class,
They smiled at each other from across the room.
 

​​The water you give me is cold,
Cold like the living dead,
Cold like the supreme court bricks
Tell me to scrub the dirt and other sins from under my fingernails,
Clean water, holy water,
It’s all getting too heavy,
Bodies an empty vessel,
It’s weight crushing my lungs
while I crumple into a broken mermaid,
Waking only to a communion
at the foot of a sunken chapel,
Of course, only the waves
could sort my scars into sonnets
There is a rhyme hidden in every seashell I swim past,
words that don’t fit perfectly into sentences but that’s okay
The ocean etches a secret into my palm with it’s pebbles,
dulled by years of heartbreak
And then there is beauty in the crooked lines of a shark's jaw,
The rough patterns scribbled across the scars on a turtle's back
I hide damp ocean mud in the pockets of my clothes,
Scrawl ideas in the sand because they were just too good to keep inside,
My hair singed with fire and near misses and all the sins I was told to hide,
Did you know that every scar on my body traces back to one story?
There are fables and lyrics alike slipping out of my cheap lip gloss,
And they can’t seem to stop so I concur that there will always be pink smudges on my teeth.
Every bit of my skin has more poetry than the fake glitter you smear on your face.
You may not be able to see it,
But the creatures in the ocean can see just fine,
And the ghosts at the back of the salon,
They can see it too

​To have no seasons
Is to live in a land of extremes
Is to alternate between rain and sunshine
Is to alternate between the blazing sun and freezing air-conditioning
To have no seasons
Is to see trees sprout green leaves all year-long
Is to see yellow leaves coating the ground in July
Is to replace nature’s miracle of snow with foam or styrofoam
Is to replicate winter at an indoor snow centre
To have no seasons
Is to purchase winter clothing only used at the ice skating rink
Is to never witness our oceans freeze
Is to be protected from natural disasters (naturally)
Is to read children’s books that talk of seasons (and struggling to comprehend)
Is to fly to other lands for that craved feeling of having seasons

By: Mallika Gupta

 
Her eyes,
beautiful brown doe-eyes
Seemed gentle and kind
with specs of
an earthy green
The furthest thing away
From cold and calculating
 
Her beautiful brown doe eyes
Enchanting me
Luring me
Confining me
And me?
I got drunk
So very drunk
Under her gaze
 
Her beautiful brown doe-eyes
Don’t lie to me
All of us have fallen like fools
For somebody’s beautiful brown doe-eyes
 
Her beautiful brown doe-eyes
Were not what I should have been looking at
The shackles on my wrist
Binding me to her
Never letting me escape
But as I ponder upon the thought
Of being imprisoned by her stare
I don’t think I mind the chains
 
Her beautiful brown doe-eyes
My new found addiction
My bad habit
Mine.
​
-Mallika Gupta

​I sought Peace on the congested streets of my consciousness and in my letters to God. 

Is it a sepia paint that coats nefarious sins and premature loss of innocence, allowing you to have nostalgia?

Is it a crane that lifts the bricks off your chest in the morning?

Is it a hand that weeds trauma and tends only to your daffodils and daisies?

Is it the company of your chosen family?
The understanding layered in their silence, the absence of judgment in their arms. 

Is it the funeral of deadly thinking?

Is it the call you never get from a doctor?

Is it the epiphanies that grow into the revelation of another birthday?

Or is it a monogamous relationship? 
It does not compete for you, it has no true rival, and it will not be branded with a scarlet letter? 

If this is fact, then to live in me is a stone-worthy affair.

I did not know how many loose ends were in my possession until my ventriloquist sent neurons as a laxative to the shadows.

How was I to know the casket was empty?

I would wait until I am one with the concrete but Peace does not live in roadkill.

So how do I fix my streets?

Do I have to carry all of these burdens?

Is it really all my fault?

Maybe if they called 511, if they didn’t beep their horns and take the back roads, 
I could safely wander.

But grudges are another affair and I need to end these open relationships.

I need to drop off the hitchhikers and travel on different roads.

I need to forgive myself.

Then my flowers will bloom.

There’s a certain type of Loneliness to living in a city. The type that trails behind you, out of sight, but never out of reach; the type that waits until the last light flickers closed to envelope you in its embrace. And such solitude, as the girl would find out, wasn’t so easily gotten rid of.


If one could only imagine, within the four walls adorned with art works and shelves littered with memorabilia, it seemed for all the worlds that Loneliness would not have been welcome in such a place. Beauty contained within a canvas lazed about in various spaces, cups labelled with ‘do not drink!’ scrawled in a careless hand decorating the wooden furniture. It was a small space, but much occupied it.


Certainly, the girl thought, a Loneliness that vast could not belong to her.


It had started as most things do: with a seed. A seed was special in that it could bloom in the most marvelous ways, and often, in unexpected ways. Unanticipated flowers or serendipitous ideas bloomed into fruition from these seeds. But on occasion, when watered with melancholy and nurtured with dejection, it could bloom into weeds, and it would run rampant, poisoning the other seeds that had held the promises of ‘maybe’ and ‘could have’. The girl had unknowingly nursed the seed into blossom, and watered Loneliness with the tears she neglected to shed, and Loneliness grew to occupy much of the empty space within her.


Neon lights cast a harsh glare into her little space, as if they too recognised the empty beauty and vacant promises that lingered in the very air. The girl wandered, like a wraith retracing its steps to preserve what little bit of humanity it still retained. And behind her, never far, trailed Loneliness. The artwork seemed to mock her. For all the colours splattered on them, it was a hollow mockery of what it ought to be, some semblance of art smudged on canvas. The memorabilia depicted grinning lips, but the eyes — so often regarded as the windows to the soul — held a void whose hungry maw swallowed light.


Beyond it, let us take a  nocturnal journey through the city, where not even the laughter carried by the wind nor the crooked smiles of the inebriated seemed to chase away Loneliness. Neon signs glowered at the rain-slick concrete of the streets, glass titans towering overhead scraping the sky, and somewhere in the distance, the sea sighed. Perhaps unbeknownst to others, while Loneliness followed only a few, its kin haunted always followed at least one person. Melancholy, Avarice, Wrath, Wistfulness— it was a city of ghosts.


Laughter was barren and smiles were vacuous, and so the city-dwellers sought to fill that empty space inside of them with opulence, trying to put a stopper on the sands of time that trickled steadily as Joy slipped between their fingers. Seeds such as Loneliness were rare and far in-between, but in a city of seven million, from where it grew its cold vines within the hearts of us all, its presence was known intimately by everyone.


And such solitude, as they would find out, was not so easily gotten rid of. ​

You're my most painful goodbye,
enough to hollow the heart;
ignore all outcries,
and faintly depart.
 
The afterglow of your absence is dimmed,
and all these lonely shadows no longer worship
the horrors of your scarred grey winds-
bound to the broken promises of yesteryear.


Yet your golden halo stays,
atop your crown;
fires ablaze,
never once coming down.


How beautiful,
so very illusional. ​

Her majestic stature
A beautiful uproar
Shifting, now
A modest creature
Her ambivalent nature
Making her all the more grand

We listen for her lilting lullaby
The hum enveloping
Us with the warmest embrace
Her voice hypnotising
Allowing us to drown our sorrows

An intoxicating array of perfumes
Acting as a silhouette
Her signature lingering in the air
The scene an indulgence
Burned in my memory

Her movements filled with grace
Subtle yet bold
With hints of flirtation
If only she were human
And not this ethereal creation
The first love of many

The blue sky
Mirrors the ocean
And echoes
Its hollow truth

​Enrapturing us
In its Deceitful
And playful manner

Wrapping its arm
Around the globe
Punctuated by green lands
We call home

Separated cotton strands
Wistful splinters
Spread their arms
Onto the blue canvas

Embodying Fallen angels
And
The commencing
Of new stories