I may be a pilgrim, carcass or osmosis
You vanity the afterthought on the ripple
of a mirror
In the breath of your last prayers at
Passover —
A dusty obituary mops the sins of an ailing
cemetery
I breach the ordeal through the blurry
shoulders of Himalayas like the
notifications you miss.

Each night you bloom into your
grandmother’s favourite ritual of flowers —
Owning the shy and naive lovers from a
fable
She taught you slowness in the lovelines of
your saddest smiles.

The tattered sun in your filter coffee is a
monastery of your alter self —
In the wilderness of a wish I travel deep
into the loneliness of your navel

Stirring my villages of afternoon shadows
to a dimmed star.

Bra. Braces. Hair dust
You intervene the atlas in your native
tongue
I swallow a few old glances of your reading
glasses —
Barricading the blind ache of words.

There comes the lad in his neptune sleep
He wears your skin of tamarind summers
and a rush of giggle feet
A bogie of distances rides in his chest —
He throws some pebbles into the sea
exhaling scorpions and fishermen.

A monologue lashes your window of a lost
habitat
On an unlatched Wednesday of cyclone
under your eyes
When you heave a length of whispers in
my half-read Ishiguro —
I search your lost amens: the intimate,
unreadable, and the dying ones…

In the inarticulate leftovers between a
washerwoman’s fingers.

…

Ronald Tuhin D’Rozario lives in Calcutta. He writes stories, poems, and essays. You can read them at: https://linktr.ee/ronaldtuhindrozario