Every time I sneeze
Within and beyond
My morning allergies,
I feel like I am losing
A little piece of me.
Every time I cough
And irritate my palate
Irascibly rough,
I wonder when it’s going
To be enough.
Every time my sinuses
Swell up and clog
My passages,
Only time can soothe
The intractable ravages.
For pain is pain
And itch is itch –
Sharp or dull or faint – as such,
When all weapons fail,
The touch
Of familiarity
Becomes the de facto
Crutch.
– Akanksha Gupta
Something watches my soul
Something lingers in the cold
Something curls up in the corners
And peeks from between the folds
Everything heckles my haunts
Everything jostles my jaunts
Everything casts a shadow
That cackles, and croons, and taunts
Nothing remains untouched
Nothing changes all that much
Nothing even prickles the silence
That sutures a bygone grudge
⁃ Akanksha Gupta
Between the shadows
and the soul
The mysteries lurk
uncontrolled
From bold the lies to
colder truth
Nothing is ever
understood
O in the shade
of hung despair
The silence shrouds
and stands and stares
A whiff of careless
times gone by
Invites the whims
to multiply
Till at the close
eyes weary rest
Ashes to ashes
jest to jest
– Akanksha Gupta
In the darkness of the night
There are secrets that we hide
In the brightness of the day
Faces give naught away
There is blood and there is grief
There is pain no words can ease
They are shadows fires cast
Burning the future past
Gone
Is it my wake?
I hear the dirge
Am I awake?
In the dying of the light
We don’t go without a fight
In the crook of in-between
Dreams are true, truth’s a dream
There is death and there is life
There’re no truths, there’re no lies
They are shadows that time casts
Blurring all th’ futures past
Gone
Yet I’m awake
Or is it all
In my head?
(I composed these lyrics to accompany the haunting melody of Javier Navarette’s Lullaby from Pan’s Labyrinth)
– Akanksha Gupta
The Pluming PoeTree 