Woman in a Blue-Sequinned Dress

 (This is a poem I had written one night while in London. In the morning that day I had seen many lads and ladies wearing graduation cloaks and caps and gathering outside our hotel. It was easy to tell what it was about. That very night as dad and I returned back home (our hotel), coleslaw sandwiches in hand, and after a long, contemplative walk around the city, I spotted the same group of college graduates scurrying off somewhere, this time in tuxes and gowns. Everyone looked surreally beautiful. I spotted a beautiful lady in a blue-sequinned dress amongst them. She was standing next to a traffic light, her right hand curled about a young lad’s elbow. That image stayed with me since. As mom and dad fell asleep later that night, the poem took birth in my mind, and I began scribbling it in my phone) 

Blonde Miss in her blue sequinned dress,

Smiles, clearing a facial grimace,

Solitary after torments of a bygone bloke,

Fingers clasped, today, ‘neath another’s cloak.

——–

Capes of black, heralding laurels and toils,

Glorifying everyone’s trophies and spoils,

Next to dad, in a quiet street in the magnificence of London,

I saw the tux and the gowns that remained long unworn. 

——–

Craving roses, painting lips, necks sparkly in gold,

He stood her up many London nights, all frozen and cold,

Theatrical dramas of amour rose varied visions of him,

Unaware of many other women he eyed with careless whim. 

——–

And then he stepped up, this other lad, dead scared to admit,

“No liquor just your beauty, it’s power to upraise a fit,

I have studied, played the game and lived in passion,

Why around you, fright and delight confuses me in this fashion?”

——–

 Who would’ve thought while she had prayed,

That she had been shedding shame and fear, real guilty and afraid,

Years it took like the maple trees tall down the streets,

To invite the Archangel that helped young girls from human cheats.

——–

But seeing her, transformed the new lad , made him emerge,

Thoughts and crowds that drowned him, began to reforge,

On the exact day of their last exam he openly said,

“Could I take you on the Dukenight party 3 weeks ahead?” 

——–

Tossed in a city, dad, me and my tiny poetic mind,

Them dressed for a convocation night, on asking I find,

Dried maples strum me and dad in rhythms of the wind,

As this story of amour gets lost in other dresses sequinned.

 —-By Miss Nilanjana Haldar