M

Madonna of the blue sky

by Kavya Sharma

long finger-nails 
cream hands 
and a smile that drives you
to hell and beyond,
there’s a boy out there who 
calls me Madonna 
we’re back in a time where oceans 
smell of women with lassy legs
and pink tongues, 
polka dot bikinis
And orange skin, 
it’s contours and perfect lies; 
He saw me semi-covered in 
baked sham. 
A martini with no ice
and I taste his salt on mine
Its glue and home hogged mother food,
I smell bourgeois flavours,
It’s a risk but I leave a number 
and a stone heart to his surveillance. 
Tonight 
when he calls me “baby girl”
I’ll fall off my bed 
break my lamp 
and step on my shattered self, 
It’s a slow painful 
self-discovery 
process,
Mother said women are 
meant to be taken care of. 
How boy?

He wears green with blues 
but his country eyes are a mix of
charcoal and grey 
His hair smells of nature 
but my birds bleed crimson 
It’s the sky versus you,
My dear boy; 
He calls me Madonna 
of the blue sky. 
we me meet. 
And again
until 
I stop reading poems 
they warn you against,
Open graves, they bear
a resemblance you fear,

thin lips 
cold hands
unshaven intentions 
clay eyes, 
there are dying birds in my sky
Oh! But boy 
how should I; 
He calls me
Madonna of the blue sky. 

Kavya Sharma

Kavya Sharma is 23 years old and recently completed her masters in Creative Writing from the University of Nottingham (UK). She is a published poet of the poetry collection- “The Carmine Memories: An Insane Woman’s Poetry” (Partridge India, 2015). Recently she was awarded The Honourable Mention by Delhi Poetry Slam for excellence in poetry in their Free Verse Poetry Contest. In 2017 she gave an interview with BBC Nottingham Radio on Project Ballads which she was working on as a part of her placement in The National Justice Museum, Nottingham. Her short stories/poems/articles have been published on various digital/print platforms including Thought Catalog, Terribly Tiny Tales, Out of Print
Magazine, Indus Woman Writing, Spark Magazine, Youth Ki Awaaz, etc. She currently works as a commissioning editor with Half Baked Beans Publishing House.