Learning to Live

By Bharati Mirchandani

 

Like a smile that slowly widens
Like a peach skin slipping off
Like evening air turns gently fragrant
My heart is growing huge, so huge.

 

Suns, moons, days, nights rotate
Birth, death, mere dictates of fate
Hands reach out, souls touch
Then turn around, disowned, estranged.
Ever since you left I’m asking,
Who is it I loved, still love?

 

Didn’t get to know you, so it may be
You made me see myself, alone—
I thought I heard a familiar voice
Calling. Not my name, yet I turned
Maybe you’re calling, calling, calling
Me, using another loving word.

 

Pulling me with silken strands
Cobwebs ablaze like evening clouds
Brief lived, but how they cling
Like scabs on my unhealed wound.

 

Perhaps deep healing already happened,
Or your scalpel didn’t cut that far under,
Depths where ancestors’ ancient wisdom
Can quench my constant ache for wonder.

 

Bharati Mirchandani from India is a graphic designer with a passion for education and poetry. She has won awards and accolades for design but began to share her poems only in the time of pandemic.