Grey

by Rituparna Mukherjee

Image by Katrin Hauf via Unsplash

I have been spinning words

Walls of them… All over my head,

Lengthy, gilded, scared, short

They come in all hues

Like the seven deadly sins

They clutch on to me

Tightly.

You reside in all of them,

Even if I write cautiously

To someone I don’t know myself,

You sneak in

With not your tongue

Not words

But just your face

And your eyes, pensive and bright

Like dewdrop on a sunny day

Your lips remain still

Your hair blowing wild,

In all my words you steal

Something off of your pen

Let your ink drip

Let your pen unravel what I write

So carefully contrived,

And all my words,

You colour them grey.

Rituparna Mukherjee is a faculty of English and Communication Studies at Jogamaya Devi College, under the University of Calcutta. Her masters in English Literature is from University of Calcutta and her MPhil on Second Language Acquisition and Strategic Competence in ESL Learners is from Jadavpur University. She is currently pursuing Doctoral degree in Gendered Mobilities in west African and Afro-Diasporic Literature at IIIT Bhubaneswar. Her areas of interest include African and Indian literature and Post-colonial and Feminist theories as well as English Language Teaching, Second Language Acquisition and Communication studies. She works as an ELT consultant, translator and ESL author outside of her work and research schedule.