#paradingpoetry

[whisperinglillies]

Lavender is associated with my favorite memory of you. On our first date, you took me to a lavender field where we could pick our own lavender in baskets. This is my favorite place on earth, you told me with a big grin, because lavender is the happiest colour. I had never thought of associating lavender with happiness, it had always been yellow for me. You turned my sun purple that day. Suddenly, I began to see everything in lilacs and violets.

After you were gone, I couldn't smell lavender without crying. I threw away every purple thing in the house. Your name was a cotton ball in my throat that I could neither swallow nor spit out. It was as if someone had taken a spoon and scooped out the flesh of the sun, leaving only the edges; a purple ring, stacked with your name. I'm standing at your grave, with a basketful of lavenders I picked from your favorite place, and as I plant them all around your tombstone, a purple streak slowly burns through the sky. We loved with a love so loud it could fill a whole room. Now, the rest of my life must be lived in silence.

-Rupali Jeganathan (@whisperinglillies) • Lavender

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[whisperinglillies]

That summer we spent together is turning in its grave. Termites are feasting on its flesh, and its bones are breaking apart, turning into dandelion fluff to be blown away by the winds of time. All the moments we spent together on the beach have turned grey in my mind. Our memory is a colouring book, and I'm desperately trying to fill it with rainbow colours, but I keep running out of purple, and all the other colours turn grey. We were two tangents meant to cross paths only once in our life. I keep searching for you in every shade of the sunset sky. The only comfort is in thinking that we are both looking at the same sky. Perhaps you are looking for me in sunrises while I search for you in sunsets. Maybe that's why we keep missing each other.

-Rupali Jeganathan (@whisperinglillies)

// My laptop is dying, and I would really like to get a new one. If you like my work, support me by buying me a coffee via Ko-fi. ( ꈍᴗꈍ) //

[whisperinglillies]

I am not bones / plastered with honey skin /the colour of my mother's chai. / I am just an ache / filled with the quiet of funerals, / the belly of a poem, / a storm with skin. / I am just a moment, / I am eternity.

-Rupali Jeganathan (@whisperinglillies)

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[whisperinglillies]

How much do words weigh, you ask me. So, I decide to conduct an experiment. I take a lime green page out of your favorite notebook, and write about our favorite Uncle. I write about our yearly ritual of licking ice cream while on the ferris wheel, and trying not to let it drip. I write about how one time he dropped the ice cream cone and it fell on someone's head, and how we laughed and laughed that day. I don't write about all the times we'll never get to go on the ferris wheel with him, though. Those unwritten words hide in the margins, and in the spaces between the lines. They make the page bleed. I rip the words out of the page and throw them towards the sky. They wither away like clouds. They vanish like dandelion wings. But my fingers still remember them. My heart is weighed down by these words. So, I look to you and say. These words are weightless. These words carry the weight of the world.

-Rupali Jeganathan (@whisperinglillies) • Weightless

// If you like my work, consider supporting me via Ko-fi. Click here! (✿^‿^) //

[whisperinglillies]

I kissed you

with sunshine on my lips,

and

watched you burst

into flowers.

-Rupali Jeganathan (@whisperinglillies)

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[whisperinglillies]

Airports are timeless places, or rather, they are places where a single strand of time stretches on forever like an uncoiled double helix DNA strand. The sky burns bright red against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows and I think back to five years ago when we would lie down on the roof on that scratchy blanket, watching the sunset, wishing we could reach out and touch it. The sky would look like a red carpet and I would imagine scooping it out like ice cream and eating, eating, eating, till my insides glowed liquid red and I resembled a red poppy. Sitting here at this airport, in this infinite moment, with the sky painting red arcs of light on the windows, waiting for your plane to land, I realize the simple joy of waiting to see the face of someone you love again. Your plane lands, you walk through the gates with your luggage in your right hand and your left in your pockets. You look at me and your face breaks into a spectacular grin that even the red light of the sky pales in comparison, and in that instant, you and I are a photograph with the world around us blurred out, and my insides glow. My insides glow. And in this moment, in this strange, timeless place, I realize I don't need to swallow the red sky to glow.

[If you like my work, consider supporting me by buying me a coffee via Ko-fi ( ꈍᴗꈍ)]

-Rupali Jeganathan // Glow

[whisperinglillies]

Our story is the oldest story in the world. I reached my hand out to you and you broke my fingers with your absence. I once read that an octopus has eight limbs and three hearts and blood as blue as the ocean and I can’t help but wonder if I were an octopus I would have to feel your absence eight time and with each break of my finger each of my three hearts would sit a little bit heavier inside my ribcage. How incredibly difficult it must be to carry three fists of heartbreak around inside you and still remain breathing. How incredibly difficult it must be to not know if you were swimming or drowning in your own blood.

-Rupali Jeganathan // @whisperinglillies 

[My laptop is on it’s last stages, and I would really like to get a new one that would make my writing process easier. If you like my work, consider supporting me by buying me a coffee via Ko-fi.]

[whisperinglillies]

Yaozhe.

Yaozhe: death in childhood (Chinese)

Death came for my brother

unannounced-

a draft of icy wind

unwelcome

inside a warm room.

•

I sit beside him

and hold his hand.

Icy fingers

grip my spine.

I shiver.

He does not move.

His hand-

weightless in mine.

•

My mother does not know

what to do

with the sudden winter

that has descended

into our home.

She adjusts the thermostat.

The cold does not move.

It has made its home

among us.

"Leni", she whisper-cries my name.

That is the last word

she ever speaks.

•

My father does not cry.

He slumps

like an empty sack

on the corner of the room,

his eyes as lifeless

as my brother's hands.

He gets up abruptly.

"I'm going for a walk", he says.

He never returns.

•

Years have passed.

We moved houses.

It never turned into a home.

Our neighbours ask

all sorts of questions.

"Why doesn't your mother speak?"

"What happened to your father?"

"Do you have any siblings?"

"Yes", I tell them.

"I had a brother, but he died.

My mother never spoke again.

My father left and never returned.

And me, I am here

but I am not."

-Rupali Jeganathan

If you like my work, consider supporting my by buying me a coffee via Ko-fi.