An Evening Out Poem by Anupam Srivastava

Once again we take a dip
Into this awfully filled up night
Where thoughts don’t colour the darkness,
Each night can’t paint the moon.

We sit on a wall with broken edges
Watch the city slipping by
The living go past on spinning wheels,
The dead walk wearily and sigh.

The wind ruffles your soft hair
And blows it all across your face,
The rot it picked up from the dump,
The stench it gathered from the heap
Is invisible. You look beautiful.

It will meet us here tomorrow
If we return to this desolation.
It circles within the city’s confines
Like miners trapped till death in mines
Dying of suffocation.

You are my only friend and when
I am waiting, ready to die
With not a soul stirring by,
I will rest my head on your lap
And say, this life wasn’t bad.