Monalisa Dash Dwibedy








I Still Remember That Day

I looked at the blue wild sky,
The sky that is as vast as eternity,
The sky that holds the Universe in its lap,
When the stars started telling me the stories of ancient times,
As crazy as it sounds, something inside me broke, and as if captured on film,
I found myself slowly sinking to my knees.
The tears began rolling down my cheeks without warning until soon I knew I was sobbing.
What reflex betrays one like this?

What chemistry did the blue sky and the stars create within me ?
What inside me had malfunctioned had left me kneeling and sobbing for no reason?
Was the sky calling me to join the clouds and I cried because I could not soar the new heights ?
Or Was I crying because I was in a fight with the devil within who did not let me fly ?

Someone saw me crying, touched my shoulder with compassion and told me: “Just cry. Just cry. Free yourself.” But free myself from what, exactly?


You see, I want this whole thing to be something meaningful,
My falling to my knees just by looking at the sky and crying uncontrollably.
But nothing meaningful has presented itself.
Even now, after so much time has passed, I have no clue
What any of this means.
I still have not figured out whether I lost myself or found myself that day.

                            






Sky


The sky is a vast blue canvas
I splash colors of happiness and sadness together.
The sky is all-inclusive
I reach out to sky, to get away
From all anxieties and stress.
When my imaginations roam free,
Clouds lend me words,
To write blissful poetry.
The sky is my world,
Creative, colorful, secretive
Where I do not have to fake,
Where I am myself,
Always.


                            






Daffodils

Are you a perennial flower for real or a poet’s imagination?
Who first coined your name daffodils?
The dewdrops or the dawn?
A newspaper boy or the rising sun?

Could I see you as a bright yellow bloom from the clouds If I were floating as they?
Could I feel you the way I feel now if I were born as a goat or a nerd?
Are you brought from famous distant countries of which I have never heard?

O’ dear horticulturist!
O’ dear Traveler!
O’ dear wise man from the skies!
Please show me the place where a piece of life called Daffodil lives!


Monalisa Dash Dwibedy

                            
Monalisa Dash Dwibedy is an IT Consultant by day and a writer by night. A bilingual writer, her English poems were published in many international anthologies and magazines. She is the author of Odia poetry book “Anjulae Smruti” (A handful of memory). She loves travelling and feels mountains call her when she is nearby. She aspires to befriend the Himalayan mountain ranges and wishes she could talk to the Sun and the Moon someday. Monalisa lives in Toronto, Canada. She can be reached at Monalisa.dash@gmail.com