I hide consonants under broken fingernails

I hide consonants under broken fingernails

and deliver a bravura performance.

No, you cannot decipher my fatigue.

I dress up spectacularly

bathed in turmeric yellow

like a wedding ritual.

With my metaphoric verses,

I paint the sky's tripod extravagantly baroque!

Neon-colored tinges

are strewn across the horizon's bosom.

Just like my broken nails

tinctured with the coral blue enamel

hiding a million consonants beneath its hue.

With pebbles inside my pocket

I relentlessly stare at the ethereal skyline;

it looks like a tumbled bottle of exotic Petite Sirah!

A new day has come;

bearing the fragrance of new hopes!

Silently, I sit on my old wooden chair

hoping for the rain to wash this world of its pandemic.

Time stands still

like a spring evening

that has come empty-handed. I check my fingernails- it is time for a manicure! Before that, I need to hide my consonants somewhere else! Slowly, I pack them away in a metal box and throw them into the sea of esoterica till my nails grow back again.

Debarati Sen works at the Presidency University, Kolkata as a Junior Assistant. She is also an independent researcher in the genre of Disability Studies and a freelancer with an International NGO named JPS Medaid. Writing is therapeutic for her.