Grey

To watch age deteriorate and weaken the strongest persons you’ve known, is never easy. The slow suffocation caused by Time leaves us all gasping.

​“Grey” by Manognya Bethapudi is an attempt at catharsis, an attempt to dissect feelings and to process them.

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Cover Photo by Ravindra Patoju

It was slow

Black and brown became grey

Laugh lines became deep creases

march became a tread

And you became alone

Two became one

A hollow shell of one

Curious eyes leached colour

Spry shoulders sagged under the weight

Of dragging your stars through the night

Full arms, fallen wide

I watched from the side

As your eyes clouded with age and grief

As your hands reached out to hold ether

As you held your pieces together with pain

I watched from the side

As they erased your reds

They took away your yellows

And blanketed you in white

I watched from the side

Another pair of eyes

In your deconstruction

In the unpacking of your essence

And I was silent

I was complicit in this violence

I saw everything

but never through your eyes

It was fast

It was too fast

That you were left all alone

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Awards

This contribution won the third-runner up in the Poet’s Carnival 2021.

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Credits

This contribution is photographed by Ravindra Patoju.

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Product

This poem is available in paperback & ebook.

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