By: Shaan Sood

We Should Have Let Go:

Behind our blue skies
A photograph faded from touch
Its incandescent glow of before
Hidden
Oh, forgotten

Holding grains of sand
That were filled with the words
Said through murky water
We should have held tighter
We should have let go

A flower pressed in the cover of a book
That came from the beds that used to grow
And now it’s broken and browned and frayed
We should have held tighter
We should have let go

Museum exhibits of lives
Indelible thoughts, words
Perforations in our minds
We should have held tighter
We should have let go

Bagged up and locked
Our past made of gold
Slipping from us
We should have held tighter
We should have let go

Staring lackadaisically
At what was falling in our thoughts
Wishing, watching, waiting.
We should have held tighter
We should have let go

We should have held tighter

We should have let go.

####

Lies From the Sky:

Did you know
That once,
I had wings?
They had long feathers
That spanned through
Miles and miles
Of sunlight and blue sky.

And then my wings turned black.
Their feathers shined
Gold like the sun it touched
But clouds exist, my friend.
I used to fly
But only rarely,
Because I did not understand
That my wings, one day
Would turn black.

But I thought that eventually, the sun was supposed to shine through clouds. Perhaps that’s the first lie I was ever told by the sky.

Wings aren’t all golden.
They can get caught
In fallen breaths.
They can be captured
In cut off words
And they can lose their golden feathers.

Dust storms and snowfalls are made of broken golden feathers that can never make it onto wings.

I used to fly
Now I sit
Writing a song
To my wings
Because

Once…Sunlight turned me gold.