First up in our series of guests posts for May is Devika Mathur from My Valiant Soul. I asked her to tell me about how she found taking part in NaPoWriMo and to provide us with her favorite piece that she created during the month.

Devika is a published poetess residing in a country of stratified colours, India. Her work has been published/scheduled in Visual Verse, Sick lit Mag,Kitab.org, Subterranean blue poetry among various others. A lover of Oxymoron and words and a teacher, she loves to dance to rest her anxiety.

The national poetry month was not an easy thing to comprehend. I took a pause and wrote my stress disguised as poetry like a thunder, one could say. It made me sturdy from within and outside. The poetry month is like a spring that soothes one’s soul. Healing with emotions.

Time & You

I was the one
with bruises and stones
in my mirror-eyed reflection
a reflection of you, mother
the cacophony of time and hours
floating inside your eyes,
the heaviness of pebbles and rituals.
Your arm mocked your cerulean breast,
with its swollen stigma of memoirs
and some pictures, vintage.
I combed your concave mouths
of dripping forlorn fractures,
like a staircase bleeding
or a topology reversed and processed.
I am a soft song in your black-knitted bun
a piece of your chipped nail,
a sunflower, kissed and harassed
inside your turbulent head.
A cauldron, and a day full of nights
hid beneath your muffled chin,
a mole hanging beneath your shouts and dim- dreams.
Mother, you are a pool of madness
and a point blank.
Obscure, shadowy your tongue knits tears
and a sweet thread of touch, impeccable.
Sometimes, I glint in your orange censure
a pattern of love and you,
Your body is a dream.
and I fall in your loops of laps.
the uncontrollable seizures,
the uncontrollable laughters,
Scarlet red wires.
it’s all you, it’s all you.

The challenge has given me a belief of satisfaction. A casket of words and literature in my daily monotonous life. I have already written more than one poetry a day but this challenge is a catharsis I feel.