Home Poem by Anupam Srivastava

The sea whispers to me in my sleep
Calls me son
Wants me home

Says I’ve been out too long
Like a migrant
Selling his blood for the smell of money
Spending a life in the hope of another

Calls me half-alive, half-dead,
Like the half-sunk sun in its calm – all red
Says I only know how to drown

Says that he runs in my blood
And day and night I hear his calls,
But I twist and turn and burn, but stay
While restlessly he rises and falls.

He calls me home, lets out a sigh
And I, like game,
Caught between the jaws of my trap
Can only writhe in pain and cry
With a throat that’s gone
Oh, so dry!

So tell my father
One day I will tear away
And home I will come back to die.