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  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Contributors
    • Support Us
  • Submit
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Volume I >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume II >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume III >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume IV >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume V >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume VI >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II

Indigo

by Arja Kumar
Solstice is cruel--
fog and dead grass,
dead town, those sleepy spirits 
noosed by telephone lines,
dark snow showers,
silent question, no answer indigo skies,
where the lamplights by that small
frozen pond burn orange and we
walk by the edges in the cold holding 
each other’s shadows.
He tasted like cancer
and I close my eyes
tracing his soul with stardust fingers smooth edges of the universe, 
vein rivers down spine and bone,
mountains of mortal. 
I dream him closer 
until the nausea drowns. 
He is always ill with something--
Sanatoria 
Philosophia
Pneumonia.
My ankles lay heavy on 
his conscience,
the hollow I 
try to fill. 
How much more
can you wring 
death from the jaws
and hands of a phantom?

Peek of sun just once
please come. 
Life, please don’t fantasize an adoration  
after teasing me with the grieving.
Please bless me with another tempest. 
Good grief, 
I could’ve been some mediocre philosopher,
if you just told me instead.

I piece off my clothes again
and lay naked under the heavy blanket
or weight of fate,
those cosmic hands that made
me.

​I wish all ghosts understood 
Solstice like this. 

Arja Kumar is a human, writer, and nineteen-year-old college student from Illinois. Her work has appeared in literary magazines including KAIROS, Sweet Tree Review, Literary Orphans, Blink-Ink, and Bop Dead City. When she is not writing, she likes to paint, cook, and philosophize.