A Day Lost Poem by Shivangi Mariam

At last loss has visited me,
She carries me in her throat tonight.

The night is a bed of tears frozen in time
they labour under the past, mime
what was then a fugitive, now a
tyrant, the moon rises as a prayer,
a pair of hands in a cupped stare.

Dawn sleeps by the window-sill, dreams.

Crisp children merry-go-round
the burnt craters of rotis, their sound
the dull thuds of a rind on the hard stone
of hunger; a home long deceased
mango flesh in their palms
is lava. They rake dying embers,
archive sighs in their eyes.

Hope bathes in the cold still streams.

The river loses droplet by droplet
a part of his identity, a mouthful of his sonnet
to the cloud. The bloated bodies of sentences
rise to the surface, leaking meaning
existence leaks from the self
The tired farewell hangs in the sun
by the violent promise of return.

Rains arrive, presenting their bill, in reams.

Villages have swelled to be wailing wombs
where each labour dissolves in tombs
and crematoriums. The old women sing and sugarcanes
dance on the ash-charged soil, the faint sky
peeks into the interval between two breaths. Sakhamay!
The village pleads. Dead faces reply.

The day, a descending, tired eagle, screams.

Braided in these nights,
these children, these rivers, these villages
loss is a visitor tonight.
I'm an inconsolable wave in the void
I torture her memory-
She carries me in her throat tonight.

Allow me to throw these nights at you
these children and these rivers
with all their suffering, allow me
to enwomb you in this village of misery tonight.
At long last loss has visited me
She carries me in her throat tonight.


(with A.A.)