Somewhere on the moon
I have been trying to decipher your thin smile,
a shaky bridge between your ears. Those eyes,
slits- blocking away the truth, with a look of
longing, search for stars beyond your skin. The way
you chaliced your palms when it rained, like the
trees- letting the cuts of fate wash away, gladly.
How you blocked out the buildings with your hands
and with one eye open, looked at the way the sky
would be without them. I like the way how you
always talk about the moon, as if you have been
there, as if you found love there. Those amethyst
flowers you used to keep under your cotton sleeves,
have been growing inside me since the day you left.
The skin of the earth peels as I run away from
autumn- the season you detested unlike the
touch of horse’s mane against your cheeks.
I can only yearn to see you wading through
the lake in the valleys of Kashmir, where the
unclad trees pray for me to pass by them-
for a blow of air against their rotten wounds.
Only if you had known that the moon never
showed itself again, since that night. I know
you would come back if I told you that I can’t
reach to the place where I am headed to,
without your fingers pointing towards
that part of my soul, which I can call home.
Aashna Nagpal is a seventeen year old studying at The Heritage School, India. Her poems have appeared in Canvas, Teenage Wasteland Review and elsewhere. She has been yearning for a pet since she was six. Her poems strive to either bring serenity to the reader or stir an inner conflict through her attempts at deciphering human emotions. For her, poetry happens either in emptiness or in the middle of complete chaos.
Note: Somewhere on the moon was originally published in Teenage Wasteland Review