By Geetha Ravichandran

A Prayer What can you say to a dear friend who is fighting for life, gasping for breath? Open your eyes- the tender mango leaves, have begun to sprout. There’s a ruckus outside the window, the babblers you watched over daily, are scrambling for grain. Let the love your gurgling laughter spread, the faith that kept you busy on cold nights, the beauty of your giving freely, gather -- to weave a magic blanket to protect and heal you. Clouds Every cloud holds a story, in its nameless form and its formless cape. One edges out the sun, jutting on its way and dabs its cheeks with pink splotches. Another blazes a trail, of gold dust and flushes in borrowed beauty for half-a-second. One stands like an anime, poised for eternity. There’s an in-between god, who rides a tiger and pours rain callously on a cold, feverish city. The posthumous rain will splash on, till the burning fever wrath evaporates like a dream, when the folds of the cloud unfurl and let the clear sky be.
Geetha Ravichandran lives in Mumbai. When she is not working, she watches the sky and the sea. In the past year, her poems have been published in Borderless, Setumag and included in a couple of anthologies published by Hawakal.