By Nikita Tilak
UCL
Really, it’s much too kind of you to have brought me
Flowers!
Not at all, not at all –
No, really, much too kind
I must entertain you now;
there is a coin in my chest.
It spins and it spins
heads or tails, heads or –
An uncertain hand starts to withdraw.
You do not want to play,
you tell me to
save it for another day.
– really, they’re just flowers!
You don’t understand.
I am not as complex as this excitable ego makes out.
I am no tortured individual:
do not pity me.
I am no silver strand in a shock of blonde hair.
I brush it all away with the sweep of a comb.
I am none of these things.
Too much, too much.
I look at myself, plain Jane.
Really, flowers. I am a simpleton.
I’ve been in the company of wild animals.
I’ve seen lions and dragons
I cannot keep up with their
sleek, dynamic voices,
their stories, their lives.
I am not such an interesting creature.
I talk about moss,
I dream of fog.
I am a prawn head on
crustacean shoulders.
Be patient with me.
Let me spin my coin, heads and tails
and heads and tails and –
I still wonder that
you will ever draw a head or tail out of me.
I am a simpleton.
My canvas asks for nothing.
I hope you don’t mind
that I am not so one of a kind.
But still;
you play the anthem of my boring heart.
Featured image by Inga Vuljanko Desnica
Blueprint 