“A Heterogeneous Mixture”: a poem by Chinmayi Balusu

Beautiful lies

Easy to disguise

Yet hard to surmise

Red and yellow, black and blue

Hurt my heart the way you do

Fall in love, there’s nothing we can do

A flickering static that confuses my will and clouds my breath

Too much fun before you return to reality

I recognize talent but

Alas, not the way back

The hope fills me as I claw at the

remnants of my dreams

Sorcery, I believe, is the

sole way to transmit what seems like this

art

Shreds and shatters and crumpled pieces again

Satin consciousness will break you but heal me

My mind isn’t a jumbled maze but rather a wide open staircase where I’m stuck on the 8th step

A pause in the flow as I tremble at what I’ve written

How could I even-