Fuchsia Shock

My bed smells of textbooks and it is more than a month or so, since I dreamt of sunlight and the sky's embrace. Even a woman's lush vanities — scarlet silk and shining gold — have been lost on me. I am snared in a world of aqua, fuchsia, and lime set dangerously against black and white. Words tightly wrapped, and imprisoned in a cluster of highlighter colours, share my slavery. Rattling loud, the colorized intrusions have pickled the past, leaving me to savour saturation. Oh hell, even my treasured dreams have been bleached away in shades of three, or five. Save me, from this unbearable starkness of fluorescence; where lines rehash the pages brutally, moving with sounds of spectacled scrutiny. For, all that I can bear to comprehend is the loss of dare: my sheltered cowardice. And, the sole comfort I crave, through stifled tears is stolen love beneath stained glass windows. Dearest, lavish your love in slender earthtone shades, in the colours of skin singing — to shield our renewed dreams, and to believe, once more, in absolutes. (First published in Sulekha)