Crimson Robe
Love is like the crimson robe
flowing in the middle of the desert
unfettered
bathed by the silken moonlight
even the shifty-eyed moon is scarred but not love
it floats upon those treacherous dunes
teaches them a lesson or two
about beauty and its frailty
those shifting dunes in tandem with the winds
caught up in the illusion of permanence
as they keep up their dance
love pirouettes like a swirling dervish
to the notes of the aubade
sung by the parched lips of her scar-faced lover
watching for the last glance from his love
a fleeting touch of the crimson robe
floating and gliding endlessly
in the middle of the night
doused in the love of the silken moon
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Megha Sood, award-winning poet, editor, and blogger, lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. She is Assistant Poetry Editor for the UK-based feminist zine
MookyChick and co-editor of
The Kali Project (Indie Blue Publishing, 2021), an anthology of art and poetry by women of Indian heritage. Megha’s publication credits include
Adelaide Literary Award Poetry Anthology 2019 (Adelaine Books, 2020),
Fallow Ground (Inwood Press, 2020), and
She Speaks (Sierra Club Books, 2020), as well as
Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic, a digital initiative of Stanford University. She has recently published two collections of her own work:
My Body is Not an Apology, her debut poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press (2021), and
My Body Lives Like a Threat, a full-length collection from FlowerSong Press (2022). She blogs at
Megha’s World on WordPress and tweets as @meghasood16.
