Portrait With Blood

Portrait with blood

A force in the arteries, an animal pressing against my chest
Warm weather making me nervous in the veins
The dilution, the illusion seems cool to touch and feel
The epidermis, when scarred.

The terror in my bones
When seeing it spill over and over like
The detonation of poppy in the backyard of this earth.
The garden of life where we grow as buds, as droplets,
Throughout, paining and hankering we bloom as
Young girls learning their bodies and souls.

We endure and sustain and thrive and
Learn about freedom and how it is given to a nation when spillages of blood
As ruddy as cherry blossoms unveil, unfold.
Why not think of it though, as layers in unmoving silences
Into the blossoming of love,
Scratching the hues – rama green, purple, reddish blue,
As pomegranate gems and crystals squeezed all over,
Dropping and dripping, like petals of amaryllis love, lying
Deep within, and deep as the Holy truth.

About The Author

S. Rupsha Mitra from Kolkata, India is an undergraduate Honours student deeply interested in works of spirituality and transcendence. Her favourite writer is Rabindranath Tagore. She loves to learn and write about culture and often experiments with translations and poetry. Her works have been published in London Reader, Mermaids Monthly , Pif Magazine,  Birmingham Arts Journal , Muse India, Indian Literature (Sahitya Akademi), Science for the People Magazine, Brown Girl Magazine, The Kali Anthology – Poems by Indian women poets  ,North Dakota Quarterly, Ekstasis Magazine by Christianity Today and South Seattle Emerald. Her work has received honour in the National Lockdown Poetry contest for women held by eShe magazine. She is the winner of the BLACC Poetry Contest. She is a columnist for the magazine, Houghton and Mackay. For more information click here.