"The Sweet Scented Lilies, Soup, and Music" by Tanvi Nagar
Image by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay
I
We strung together the sweet scented lilac lilies with perfection,
and laced the low hanging air of despair with magical melodies.
The red, blue and green lines on the screens fluctuated freely,
tirelessly racing rhythmically, as if creating music.
The aroma of light-yellow luscious lamb soup escaped from the bowl
as if racing toward the white square tiled ceiling.
II
My glassy eyes, stayed fixed upon the skeleton before me- bones, flesh and a little you,
encased in a coffin of peachy pale skin and numerous twisted tubes.
The incisions in your skin were fresh,little red droplets of blood oozed out
And made my heart beat faster. It fluttered like a kite in the sky before its string is cut.
The skin on your hands and feet hung loose and lifeless,
making it harder to imagine how blood was gushing underneath this sheet.
There was so much movement in the molecules of your being and yet,
there was so much stillness in the spirit of your existence.
Your eyelids were closed shut, concealing the gateway to your universe within,
like the white sheet that covered the scars the sharp needles left on your body.
III
We strung together the sweet scented lilac lilies with perfection,
and laced the low hanging air of despair with magical melodies.
The red, blue and green lines on the screens fluctuated freely,
tirelessly racing rhythmically, as if creating music.
The aroma of light-yellow luscious lamb soup escaped from the bowl
as if racing toward the white square tiled ceiling.
It was hard to imagine the life of a human, so powerful yet dangerously delicate,
hanging on the monitors, meters, measurements.
It was still harder to imagine what pulling the plug from a socket
can do to the life hanging on like threads of loose cloth ripped at the ends.
IV
The lilac lilies danced in farewell, to some sad song it seemed
the monitors were singing slower, slower and slower still
with their constant repeating beat- beep.
The beat resounded and repeated
until the notes on the screen
refused to go up and down
and the fumes from
the soup didn’t
escape at
all.
Tanvi Nagar is a high school senior at Delhi Public School, Gurgaon, India. She has been writing for the past eight years and is passionate about public speaking, travelling, playing sports and reading. She has contributed to national newspapers, has authored four books, and won several literary awards. She loves listening to Halsey, eating traditional Indian cuisine, and singing in the rain.