litreat xavier's

 To My Lover To my lover,  In the past, my gallery was flooded with new pictures of you. Now, I only see my pictures, sad and lonely. I thought of proposing, to be with you forever, but I don't deserve you at all. I imagined our whole life in my head. I had even planned a surprise for your upcoming birthday party.  Did you just take me for granted like my other ex-girlfriend? You just stopped talking to me on every social media app and left me in the dark as if I didn't mean anything to you. I asked our mutual friends to find out about you, but they seemed to support you. You should've at least warned me about all this! Were you dating me because you don't like being lonely? To fill in a gap I was never meant to? Why have you gone silent now? You just left me when it seemed convenient. Was I always this unimportant to you? There were times we would sojourn into the flowery garden—hand in hand, for hours together. Was everything between us fake? The late night talks, the...

  Summer Comes & Goes.. Summer comes and goes. The Sun, with its bright countenance, moves from one end to another, bringing light and hope to the Forest. With every summer, we learn something new—something about this vast, fathomless world of which we have no knowledge, no insight. Every day teaches us something, some lessons that make us grateful, and others that we dare not utter, for they can make even the liveliest face pale. The summer of the previous year in the Great Forest had been different. It was welcoming and warm. Now it is shallow and sorrowful. Only the cold stays in the endless heat of the hot March days. I walk through the fields, where the barley grows, rustled by the heavy winds; the sound is foreign to my ears.  When Maria was there, I could hear soft, gushing sounds, inquisitive about the couple walking through the fields, wondering and speaking to each other. I remember the songs of the barley, singing of beauty they could not witness in their short ...

  If Only They Had Noticed.  Had they looked more closely, they could have observed the slight tremble in her hands when she entered the scene. Or maybe they could have noticed the sweat gliding down her forehead when she took in the body. But they were too busy staring at the blood to notice the fear in her eyes, the rasp in her voice. Had they paid more attention to her knuckled fists, they would have questioned how effortlessly she solved the case. Had they heard the sincerity in the man’s voice as he cried out that he was innocent, things would not have gone down like this. But alas, they were not even privy to the small smile on her face after it was all over. Maybe if they were, they would have realised that she was the killer. Written by- Tia Vincent Chittilappilly Edited by- Rashee Shetty

  Poetry: To Read or Not To Read “ Poetry .” What comes to mind when you think of it? Old, dusty anthologies with complex lines and verses that you could not understand in school? If this image keeps you away from the enchanting world of words, then maybe it’s time to reimagine what poetry really is. It isn’t something that’s localized to classroom discussions or books with fancy words; poetry is everywhere. Right from a Shakespearean sonnet to that one lyric that makes you feel understood—it’s all poetry. It’s all art .  For us, as humans, poetry can be a cathartic form of expression when regular language seems too flat. It lets us pour out emotions that don’t always find a place in our everyday sentences, and sometimes, even a few broken metaphors can express a feeling better than endless pages of explanation ever could. Poetry is a magical form of art. It does not demand skill or perfection; it only asks for you to be honest and raw. It is this honesty that ultimately foste...