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Araina Verma Poem
Cicadas drone their sun-drunk, tireless hymn
as July swelters, gold and overfull.
the driveway steams, the plastic buckets brim,
and heat, like dye, won't sit still or stay dull.
We cinch the cotton tight in twisted rings,
as if a knot could hold the blazing tide.
but sweat and color are unruly things:
both spread, both stain, both won't be denied.
Cerulean and crimson breach their line,
seep into one another, slow, unplanned,
and thicken into a hue with no design,
no name the rubber bands prepared it for.
The soda ash unlatches what was sealed;
the color doesn't sit, it moves in deep,
past cotton's threshold, till it's not revealed
but lived in, permanent as things we keep.
So heat unstitches winter's careful fold,
loosens what was buttoned, cinched, and pressed,
and turns the plain, repeated days to gold
the way a fever turns a body's rest.
Unwind the bands. Let August find the proof:
a swirl no ruler's hand could have designed,
the driveway's stain, the sun-bleached, faded roof
of summer, fixed now in the changed mind.
Copyright © Araina Verma | Year Posted 2026
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Details |
Araina Verma Poem
There is a heartbeat under my heartbeat,
the one that was already going
before I had a body to carry it in.
I have called it wrong names.
Anxiety, when it was only aliveness.
Loneliness, when it was only spaciousness
with no one to explain itself to.
It never needed permission.
It didn't wait for me to become someone
before it started shining,
the way a window doesn't wait
for the house to be finished
to let in light.
I have spent so long trying to be smaller,
easier to hold,
and this whole time
there was something in me
that was already free
of every wall I built to contain it.
If I am honest, on my most tired night,
what I want isn't answers.
It's this, to feel that I am not separate
from the thing that made the stars
and also made the way light
moves through a glass of water at 2 a.m.
I don't think delight has to be earned.
I think it's underneath me
the way the ground is underneath me,
holding me up whether I notice it or not.
I did not arrive from nowhere.
Something is still arriving through me,
right now, as this breath, this pulse,
this quiet, stubborn light
that was never asking my permission to exist.
Copyright © Araina Verma | Year Posted 2026
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Details |
Araina Verma Poem
The lightbulb was never the point.
It's the split second before it flickers on,
when the room is still dark
but your hand already knows where the switch is.
I used to think understanding arrived
like a guest, knocking politely,
waiting to be let in.
Turns out it was already inside,
rearranging the furniture for years.
Then one Tuesday it just
turns on the lamp
and says, there you are.
Not a bolt from the sky.
More like a coin
that's been in your pocket so long
you forgot to spend it,
until your fingers find the edge
and remember what it's for.
Or think of it as a word
on the tip of your tongue for a decade,
polite and patient,
waiting for you to stop guessing
and just open your mouth.
It rarely comes when summoned.
You can meditate on a mountain,
light candles, ask the universe nicely,
and instead it shows up
while you're rinsing a mug,
mid sentence,
tying your shoe.
That's the trick of it.
Epiphany doesn't knock twice,
and it never announces itself
as anything larger than a small click,
a key finally finding
the lock it was cut for
all along.
Afterward you look around
and the furniture hasn't moved at all.
Only you have,
one inch to the left,
just enough
to finally see the window
that was always in the room.
Copyright © Araina Verma | Year Posted 2026
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