Written by Aysha Razzaque
Slowly, carefully, I open a single eye
to meaningless minutes hanging from the ceiling
ticking by as I gaze upon you,
a familiar phantom surrounding you
and I must say, tonight you are iridescent.
It makes no sense, for in my heart
from the start was a frigid kind of apathy to
your overcast sky darkened by clouds of indigo.
Hard as I try, I fail to fall back asleep.
No counting sheep could keep away the dreams
as I lie here awake to ruminate on how I hate
the fact I must face you by the dawning day.
I may as well sketch a story
or write a painting of your presence
sculpted from nonsense like the rest of my obsessions,
your ever-glowing aura framed in indigo.
You are wind-laced smoke, the burning gasoline,
you cannot scrub yourself clean but you make me want to
pick up after you, and maybe I’ll discover
a new flavour of freedom, like cherries on a spoon
or the needles off a tree at the height of cold noon.
You stole from me my hopes and wishes
yet gave me all the more reason to fight for them back,
breaking them out of your steel cage of indigo.
The sheets stretch thinly over my bed,
as I stretch myself instead, one thousand
and two hundred words unsaid, once again.
If I listen closely, I can hear your harmony
all around me, for there is no escaping.
I’m the string you thread
into the fibers of your being that become
the fabric of your landscape, a rolling indigo.
I abhor you, I adore you, I could not care less,
yet I care too much simultaneously; I want to
leave you behind like you were never in my life
but I cannot lie, you’ll always be embedded
by the tight stitches of time
and even if I never ever come back to you,
I know everywhere I turn, I will always be marked
by your everlasting shade of indigo.
