"The Snow Globe" by Aparna Sanyal

The Snow Globe

Aparna Sanyal     

Beauty hides in Pain. 

A shy bride, she looks around 

"Glimmer" Watercolor on Paper
By J. Artemus Gordon

corners, peeks at you.

Laughs, then skitters away wearing

A skirt that trails ribbon tears 

Dead-drumstick legs lope away--

clouds of carnations in her hands,

ruffled and tinged 

with the colours of seeping 

and weeping. 

Pain is her snow globe, soon she will stand

upright in it, tilt her head up to a sun

she can never see, 

and command snow. 

And it will snow-- 

expectations, hopes 

and memories and fears will drizzle down; 

so much glitter in one globe. 

Beauty will stand stock-still but hidden. 

Sectioned from view in this flurry unleashed by Pain.

Wait for the flakes to settle, she will be 

there, sieved from granular water. 

Still there, still shining, still smiling

the Beauty in this Pain.  

Poet's Notes: This poem was written at a time when I was so low, sunk in the depths of clinical depression. Some mornings I would wake up so sad and yet sated in a strange way--grateful to have the chance to view the world through the strange, stark kaleidoscope of pain. In that heightened state, I truly see things with fresh, bright eyes that sieve beauty through pain. 

Editor’s Note:  Beauty can be cruel, terrible, horrifying even, and certainly painful--Aparna has captured this truth with the painful beauty of her words.  The snow globe conceit is brilliant--beauty in a cage and the pain of seeing it or having put it there.