The best thing about wordsmiths is they
enjoy the perks of being perfect player of words.
They are the silent readers trying to read people and the magicians who romanticise the very little imperfections of this big life. They are the one who are like a coffee on table- freshly brewed and perfect.

They are wings to thoughts, caffeine to coffee and soul to body!!

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Pensioner's Paradise
Has pensioners dying
India's Silicon valley
Has techies hospitalized
The city of parks
Tree lined avenues
with green lung spaces
Has no oxygen supplies
ICU beds available for a premium
Medicines rationed
What is this life?
That trades with lives
Turning a deaf ear
To melancholy cries
Lining pockets deep
Through ill gotten means
Lives devalued
Value added to bribes
City with windows wide open
Has some loose hinges
Tightening will set things back
Rightly in position
Confident!

Snigdha Agrawal

-

He said 'we have made it so far'
She said "we will make it further"
Just four more years to touch Gold
A challenge was taken together to live on
Both determined to face
and overcome all odds
Knowing it will play out as desired by the Gods
Snigdha Agrawal





— % &

-

I have to leave
You may not feel
any loss
But should you desire
to revisit the times
we were one in spirit
You will find me
In my poetry

-

THE PACKAGE

The label on top read "Fragile, handle with care". I wasn't expecting anything from Amazon. Who had read my mind and sent wine glasses, I badly needed. Curiosity got the better of me and I picked up the package resting on the doormat after spraying it with disinfectant.

I should have waited for sometime, as I usually do with deliveries, but couldn't wait to open this one. My fingers dug through a mountain of shredded paper and at the bottom lay a small velvet box, tied with a ribbon. Inside was a wooden heart with the inscription "My heart has turned wooden, since you left". Aha! The scumbag was again at it. No way was I giving him a second entry.

-

"What are you doing in my house?" I yelled.
In response, the guy jumped up on the sofa, gave a big stretch, staring at my face, as if to challenge "now throw me out, I dare!"

I didn't have the heart to befriend the intruder with whiskers, wearing a marmalade fur coat, silky and soft.

-

The sun rose as usual. Stayed put at home, going through the routine of staying alive, in a not so alive situation. At times like these, nature sends healing messages, via birdsong, barking dogs, flirting bees exchanging lip to lip kisses with blossoms; reaffirming there is hope in every hopeless situation. So, with hope bursting in my brain, I wait for another day, waiting to hear positive news of declining Covid deaths.

-

The spirit inside the man seeking alms
got shredded before donning the beggar's mantle
But the man who refused alms,
his soul turned rigor mortis much before
that

-

Pensioner's Paradise
Has pensioners dying
India's Silicon valley
Has techies hospitalized
Fighting for life
The air conditioned city
The city of parks
And tree lined avenues
Still with lung space
Has depleted O2 levels

-

From somewhere
a child's wail punches a hole in the silence
a dog's low pitched bark sounds ominous
a prematurely widowed woman beating her
chest, gives gooseflesh
a father's muffled cries breaks the heart into
pieces

And yet from somewhere
a koel's high pitched 'kik kik kik' validates
it's spring
a swan's ballet on the lake surface says
there is joy in beings
a calf in breach position pulled out alive,
signifies motion of procreation wheels

The mind struggles to
linear the dissonances
jostling within.

Snigdha Agrawal

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