Feathers and fabric threaded onto gowns,

A whirlwind of colors spinning to a tune.

In the chatoyant crowd I found

A lady who shimmered like a full moon.

 

She played a song into my heart

With fingers prancing across the keys.

It had no words, but words I heard,

As though she was a siren from the sea.

 

I felt like a flower when I admired her,

A sunflower who only faced the sun.

From a feeling that began as just a murmur,

I knew I had found my destined one.

 

The vultures circling above us laid wait,

But none of them could prevent inevitable fate.

The morning doves caressed our bodies,

And my mind was full of roses and poppies.

 

Like Icarus, I fell fast,

And my world then morphed into hers.

Fortunately for me, as time passed, 

The whispers in my heart became stirs.

 

I’ve been told falling feels like a foot caught in a snare,

And rose-tinted glasses hide what comes from a wound.

But to be honest? I gave no care.

Her smile expunged my doubt and I swooned.

 

My first thought at dawn, and at dusk, my last.

My days are hers: future, present, and past.

No one like her, and no one I’d ever love

Than the lady I always believed to be a dream.

 

And when it came (as it eventually would),

Right at the moment when life felt good,

I was ripped away from her embrace,

And each day, my heart dripped from my face.

 

I whispered my aches from my loss

Into a paper and sent it across.

Distance did not make me wander.

Absence made my heart grow fonder.

 

When we met again, in the frigid winter,

I told her I wanted to put a star on her finger.

My ears hushed the snow and my cheeks flushed red,

Not from the chill, but from what she then said.

 

The eutony I felt from saying her name,

Our philia that the world decreed arcane,

The weather was brumous, but the snow shone,

And I realized how much her love had also grown.

 

Let’s live in the idyllic cottage we dreamed

And raise seven cats, like we had schemed.

Our hair will grow long and be touched by clouds,

Our skin will catch wrinkles until we wear shrouds.

 

Criss-crossed pinkies, hands held tight.

In the other hand, with a pen I write,

Her name a thousand times engraved:

Eliza,

The lover in my reverie.

 

written and illustrated by Saanvi Gutta

reviewed by Keerthi Selvam and Tryphena Pilli