Entry/Exit

Pain unable to hide between its own shadows, where the grief goes to hide.
Shuddering ripples cleaving the body in half like a painful carving.

Shreds of pain hiding like crumbs between the covers. Language chiseled like
the hunters’ knife on the naked skin of the wild oak donning a false sense of ownership.

Your breath on my skin spits and marks its boundaries. Your words carve out
the burnished wounds. The bourgeois display of pain splayed for the whole world.

To whom this body belongs? Suffering is nameless. Carved out of the tongues of those
who abused us. Misunderstood and mispronounced like a foreign language.

A penny tightly clutched in the soft palms leaves impressions.
An uprooted oak falls silently in the naked woods.

A lot has entered and exit through this body leaving behind the remnant of painful
memories carving its names. A litany of boisterous acclaim.

My scorched skin covered with suppurating welts and blisters.
Skin begging for sustenance. Sometimes, even the scorched earth goes green.

I wait patiently for the rain to come. Earth trowled over and remains fertile.
Nature teaches me resilience. The parched body craves the sustenance of the monsoon rains.

Sometimes body forgets its own memories, living and breathing through the pain.
Forgetting its own entry and exit. Succumbed to life living trapped shut. 

By Megha Sood

Biography:

Megha Sood is an Assistant Poetry Editor for the Literary Journal MookyChick and a Literary Partner with the “Life in Quarantine” Stanford University, USA. Her works are widely published in literary journals and anthologies including Better than Starbucks, Gothamist, Poetry Society of New York, Madras Courier, Borderless Journal, WNYC Studios, Kissing Dynamite, American Writers Review, FIVE:2: ONE, Quail Bell, Dime show review, etc. Three-time State-level Winner NAMI Dara Axelrod NJ Poetry Contest 2018/2019/2020 and First Place National Winner Spring Robinson Lit Prize 2020, Finalist in Pangolin Poetry Prize 2019, Adelaide Literary Award 2019 and Erbacce Prize 2020, Nominated for the iWomanGlobalAwrads 2020 and many more. Works selected numerous times by Jersey City Writers group and Department of Cultural Affairs for the Arts House Festival. Editor of ( “The Medusa Project, Mookychick) and ( “The Kali Project,” Indie Blu(e) Press). Chosen twice as the panelist for the Jersey City Theater Center Online Series “Voices Around the World”.She blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/ and tweets at @meghasood16.