The sweet scented lilies, soup and music
by Tanvi Nagar
The sweet scented lilies, soup and music
I
We strung together the sweet scented lilac lilies with perfection and laced the low hanging air of despair with your magical melodies. The red, blue and green lines on the screens fluctuated freely
tirelessly racing rhythmically- as if creating their own music.
The aroma of light-yellow luscious lamb soup escaped from the bowl as if racing to reach the titled, square white ceiling first;
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 fresh- with little red droplets of blood that oozed out made my heart beat faster; fluttering like a kite in the sky before its string is cut. the skin in your hands and feet hung loose and lifeless
which made it harder to imagine how blood was gushing underneath this sheet, there was so much movement in the molecules of your being
yet, so much stillness in the spirit of your existence.
your eyelids were shut closed, 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 your magical melodies. The red, blue and green lines on the screens fluctuated freely
tirelessly racing rhythmically- as if creating their own music.
The aroma of light-yellow luscious lamb soup escaped from the bowl as if racing to reach the titled, square white ceiling first;
It was hard to imagine life of a human, so powerful yet dangerously delicate hanging on the monitors, meters, measures.
It was still more hard to imagine what pulling the plug from a socket can do to the one hanging on it like threads of loose cloth ripped at the ends.
IV
The lilac lilies danced in farewell, to some sad song it seemed the monitors beating slower, slower and slower still
with their constant repeating beat- beep.
the waves 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.
About Tanvi
Tanvi Nagar is a high school senior at Delhi Public School, Gurgaon. 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 like ‘The Times of India’ and ‘Hindustan Times’; magazines including The Weight Journal, Nymphs Publications, Paper Crane Journal, Hebe Poetry, Flare Journal, Anti- Heroin Chic and anthologies like ‘The Last Flower of Spring’ and ‘Riding on a Summer Train’ by Delhi Poetry Slam; ‘The Great Indian Anthology’ by Half Baked Beans and ‘She the Shakti’ by Authors Press. She is the former Editor of her school and the current Head Girl of the student council. She has authored four books titled, ‘A Treasure Trove of Poetic Wonderland’ ‘A Bountiful of Rhythmic Stories’ ‘Metamorphosis’ and ‘My Book of Short Stories and Poems’ and two research papers which were published in the International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research. She has also won the Eye Level Literary Award 2018 by Daekyo South Korea, The Create Change Challenge by The University of Queensland, Australia and the Millenial Essay Writing Contest by UNESCO. She loves solving maths problems and her favourite singer is Halsey! Her website is tanvinagar.com.