Taste – Nidhi Mahajan

Loneliness has a taste, you know.

It tastes like dust.

It tastes like thirst after gallons of water.

And madness tastes like blood

and looks like nothing

and everything at once.

And when words come out of my mouth

sounding like words you’d say, I

feel like a shadow, a paper folded into a

human figure. What’s it called.

Twenty-five birds in half-flight,

twenty-five ships that didn’t see

the ocean, adorning an open window.

Madwoman with her paper planes

they say, with weird tastes in her mouth.

Nidhi Mahajan studied English literature for five years before pursuing a career in digital media. She has previously published creative non-fiction on gender, literature, and popular culture, academic and personal essays, and produced videos on literary and social themes. She also runs a literature and culture blog called The Literary Edit.