In Search of a Poem by Praniti Gulyani (16, India)

I will search for a poem – 
a poem amidst the layers of night 
that twists and turns with such grace 
it buckles the belt of Orion 
and sits on the fragile shoulders 
of a shooting star, striking up a conversation 
with the wishes that it brings 
from the earth below 

I will search for a poem – 
a poem that scrunches and squirms
and becomes as small as it can, to fit 
in the wet, shadowy imprints of the kisses 
that the wind plants upon the blades of grass
the dew ​

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I will search for a poem – 
a poem amidst blistered afternoon skies 
upon which clouds, the confluence 
of a million scents, that emerge 
from a myriad lunches cooking together
from the core of chattering kitchens 

I will search for a poem – 
a poem that bruises the sky just like 
a rainbow after the brain 
and when I say that a rainbow is 
a bruise upon the sky, a colorful façade 
of a scab that conceals something way deeper 
than what it seems 

you tell me that a bruise
has many, many colors

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