Stuti Pachisia: MIXED MEDIUM ART • Cleaver Magazine

Stuti Pachisia
MIXED MEDIUM ART

Scenery 1:
The sky is a permanent state of dawn, or dusk, if you will, and I
have been having a hard time breathing. This, the inability to
breathe, I mean, began long before the sky turned grey. Some
are calling this a cataclysm. I use the sky too much in poems, just
like I use Benadryl too much in real life. My poems reflect the
sky the way my dreams reflect Benadryl. It was only a matter of
time before it turned the other way round.

Scenery 2:
There is a tree spread out like a canopy, beneath which is a stone
bench. In the rain, you can sit here without getting wet. I mean,
if the storm is external. In case of internal storms, get wet. From
my canopied stone bench, I can see the window to my college
room last year and the entrance to my college room this year.
One is an entrance I never used, the other is an entrance I
should use more often. I cannot decide which is which.

Scenery 3:
When I left my room for a week, I came back to find I had left
the lights on, and there were hundreds of light insects lying dead
on the floor. I am sure there is a language with words for blood
that is not blood, and souls which are not human. Once I find
that language, I will return, hundred weeks from now, having
learnt that language’s words for apology.

Scenery 4:
Imagine a ship, a huge ship, a cargo ship, a passenger ship, a ship
carrying whatever you value. Imagine a dark, stormy night,
the kind where in stories, whatever you value will drown, only
because you valued it too much. Imagine seeing a lighthouse.
Imagine nearly reaching the shore. The lighthouse is burning.

Scenery 5:
You were in the middle of the sky. This was before it turned
grey, before you came to the room with the dead insects, a little
after you were told how high you will be and what to do when
you crash, a little after you read a yellow message in your Inbox
saying, ‘Something’s not right’. It was too early for the sky to be
anything but pink and new and an amniotic sac of a lot of hope.
It is too late for the sky to be anything but grey and old and torn
apart in wisps. The sky keeps confusing between itself and you. If you
are in the middle of the sky, does that mean the sky is in
the middle of you?

Stuti Pachisia is an undergraduate student of literature in English at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi. In the past, she has reported and written about politics, conservation and education. She hopes to someday teach and write poetry.