To Those Stars - By Kanishka Kataria

I tried to recall when I was ecstatic. May it be the best moment, I fear that moments do not last more than a moment.

In the sea that engulfed,

It all went in vain.

It never meant the same,

While I peeked through the grains.

Her smile I adored,

Her glance I always detoured,

I miss her the way she had been,

Her story never let me weep.

She engraved her path via turbulences,

That sea didn’t know the depth

She contends. Her life she knew

Was a whole life in a single breath.

From the old photograph, she breaks in,

“The mountains had comfort and

Beaches, an adventure.”, Both are eternal,

While humans tense a straight knot that always concludes.

The sparkle in her eyes brought

The twinkle in my stars.

If’s and but’s, I knew she

Had her words to the stars.

From heaven, she speaks,

“Time heals the deepest wounds.”

This wound had no cure for

The concern is no more.

Her soul stayed back with

The graves in the backyard.

My heart still pounds for her essence,

Her mystery is still suspenseful.

The fake smiles and hidden scars intervened in the genuine quintessence of the kind. I stand nonetheless at the junction, revering my bygone and coveting to meet her somewhere in the parallel world. What remains is a cosmos that yearns to annihilate each other.

In the mysterious misery of my heart,

The dark knows my cries.

I believe in the superpower.

May she be alive.

For that is not potential,

My potential silence

Silences my speech.

My existence is merely existential.

Life has meant all that it even did. I still laugh the same at the little jokes we enjoyed together. I still pray for her. I still utter her name without an effort, without the haunting of a shadow upon it.

An unconscious study believed,

I still carry her resemblance.

My eyes, tonight flickered with the star,

Look, it looks like my prayers are

Delivered.

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Edited by Samara Yadegari

Cover page by Francine Gado