TUG OF WAR by Bhavika Sachan (21, India)

call me a dark thought
drunk on caffeine and marshmallow bursts,
which grows like ivy with rain in my heart.
show me your darkness, oh sweet weather,
— my Tree has stripped me bare-faced,
outgrown my roots, and knows all my secrets. ​

the blood-crescent moon smiles 
with such terror that reflects in my eyes
a watery night as today and
an attempt to walk out 
of this ashen skin, cold and dry, 
almost reptilian,
coating the spine of dead flesh 
that protects the memory of touch
slithering in my cells,
with hideous scents of fresh stems. 

mine is like a tug of war
between an impulsive self and 
a self which craves for solitude: 
the spite to sabotage the Tree
growing in me.
I want to walk away from this garden,
this charnel stench of
white blood oozing from 
wrinkled cuts on my leaves
trying to paint over the guilt of this war. 

I would like to walk away from here,
farther and farther till I am 
but a piercing shadow
dispersing the light at the horizon of life
into a black door of Truth 
which seems to engulf me 
till I can be seen no more 
and then, I think
it will feel better.