RAINY GUTTER IN THE GARDEN

Portrait of an Imprisoned

A broken sepia bottle bears an inured bruise
on a sepia skin of unformed flesh,
bruised and scalded clean in medicine.
A person looks upon the ground crunched and couched
with the frail bones of leaves outside the rows of scalded homes,
Silver veins of metal they see are now caged
around sepia skin of unformed flesh.
Every stitch that threads skeins opens,
antiseptics burn emollient a skin crimson,

But an empty Ferris Wheel on stormy days,
An abandoned home in a detached city,
A hole burned into a being of nobody—
forms an unformed heart.
A lonely child had clutched the sides
of a peeling Ferris Wheel with fragile hands,
Now a young adult who had walked through the streets in a reverie,
remembering the Ferris Wheel with its
scarlet-beamed paint and wheel spokes,
Now an adult trapped in the cold metal spokes of an
immemorial Ferris Wheel and a congealed wound.

Now life, it seems, has been determined in a fallen world—
but the child is gone, the Ferris Wheel is gone,
only prison remains.
Only the bruised flesh impressing the skin, unformed.
Unyielding Courage forms a new heart,
Penance smooths scars into a happy sadness, for sadness
bitters your happiness because of what you’ve done, and
Justice apportions eternal pain for your cruelty.
Redemption melts flesh anew into a new and true soul.
Only then can forgiveness be given for the joy you have taken away,
Only then can the Ferris Wheel be justified.

Rainy Gutter in the Garden

Unkempt garden, tender grass
Before which I kneel like God
Watching Ophelia in her emerald
Brocades sway in needled clovers, lacy moss,
maple seed pin-curls, rippling pearls in her hair;
perhaps this rain-dewed scoop of earth would’ve
birthed tadpoles in its ephemeral vernal pond
Had spring not blossomed into fall.
Ophelia sinks in, swallowed by
films of iridescent glass and slushes
Of tourmaline gemstones
Amid a chorus of rain
that reaches
a crescendo
at the
final
plop.

Dheeksha Senthur studied biology and criminal justice at the University of Pittsburgh. She was previously an assistant editor for her college pre-health journal, The Pre-Health Spotlight. Her other interests include reading, painting, and calligraphy.