it’s been a year or a yesterday, since i gave you up
and stalked our memories, rewinding, over
and over, the tape recorder of my past
till the faded songs, stutter and hiss
(their or our) words drowning in themselves
like a strange, surreal painting
where ancient rooms metamorphose
into real, liquid nightmares, contorting-
and i wish so desperately
to be worthy (lucky) enough
to remember the details,
the smoky ends of half-finished conversations
that never went the way i imagined
but still magical enough, to tuck away
like a secret special present
from someone never meant to be;
the line from a poem, or song
that could uncover the invisible scars
tattooed across my soul and skin
once soaked in the moonshine of forevers
from the padlocked universe(i was exiled from)
spiralling farther and farther away
each time a song/painting/conversation/poem
dies
and the phantom limb of love
stutters, breathless
in limbo.
Archita Mittra is a wordsmith and visual artist with a love for all things vintage and darkly fantastical. A student of English Literature at Jadavpur University, she is also pursuing a Diploma in Multimedia and Animation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. She has won several writing contests and her work has appeared in numerous online and print publications including Quail Bell Magazine, eFiction India, Life In 10 Minutes, Teenage Wasteland Review and Tuck Magazine, among others. She occasionally practises as a tarot card reader.
You can read more of her work on https://thepolyphonicphoenix.wordpress.com/