What if we sleep with our mouths open in
the empty use of the bedroom’s latch,
As the birds fly north when hunger ceases
on those thickly whitewashed breasts
And the wind’s brown and olive howls
learn to belong.
* * *
That year, Christmas blossomed
sprawling balconies of famous blue
raincoat.
And you would often check Thursdays as if
an omen stuck in the throat of a hammer
If nothing’s unchanged, this tired heart is
blind as a shoe box
Histories and habitat — rivers into nimbus on
your body selling the shadow for a bargain
in the bazaar.
* * *
It is often too late after quietness when
neglect settles in and the odd flash of the
advertising campaign leads the Magi home.
The lost childhood of Bicycle Thieves
begins to make sense.
* * *
Man is only a solstice in the universe
memorised and reposed in his mother’s
ultrasound
His behaviour is territorial, sighs unbuttoned up
to the chest, and a degree of kindness
across the western ghats of his forearm.
* * *
What if I stay late in love leaving all things
in wait — until they find death, democracy,
or sex?
What if too late is reported only in love?
* * *
Also Read: We Dreamt of Traveling to the City of My Childhood

Image Courtesy: Author
Ronald Tuhin D’Rozario lives in Calcutta. He writes poems, prose and essays.