Welham Girls' School

moonlight blooms under my skin

like eve’s garden,

flowering into dainty, and blood

threshing around my fingers

as a silver ring,

all want and wanderlust,

brief détente of my mind,

there’s a minefield between us,

blame betrayal and bruises,

something has torn through the sky’s

lightning struck seams,

it’s either me or you

the world rushes in,

i’m lost to the velvet dusk’s kiss,

hope splinters in girl’s hearts

shattering totality in the way i live,

thrilling lost at sea,

coughing up salt-air and tenderness

ragged gasps of gravity

thrum against cliff side like a war song,

i’ll always await

for it to weaponize against me

like a true lover

no magic like sanguine expectation,

effervescent stars strike across

the black of my eyes,

i wreak my own kind of havoc

featherlight and blood-tight,

there’s so many machinations

between the masked figures who

i share a sepia soken tapestry with,

blood and name,

always some monopolizing power play,

i don’t pick my allies carefully enough,

pale circlet of the sun

bellies out and hums in melodious sin

smokestack of clouds darkens

bearing the name of second primacy,

the bladed scythe hunger sharpens

it’s jaws against my ankles

like honey covered shackles,

I’m evermore caught into whirlwind,

you’re moored to me,

and we might be pulled

into the cosmopolitan fray,

teetering on a precipice

between reality and possibility,

small orbits of what is true,

you’re my chapel,

beautiful stained glass and headstone,

my hearts burning like a candle wick,

moon-blind and breathing.

-          Bidisha Dam (H/566)