The Night That Would Not Let Us Leave Poem by Pushp Sirohi

I came as dusk comes—quietly persuasive,
A shadow learning the grammar of skin.
First, we were weather: sudden rain on stone,
Urgency slick, the body letting me in.

Then we were fire taught to breathe together,
Embers rehearsing how not to go out.
Heat learned patience, hunger learned shape,
Flames bending low to listen, not shout.

We turned to tide next—pull and surrender,
Salt on the mouth, the moon kept at bay.
The room rocked gently, faithful as water,
Each wave returning because it must stay.

After, we became glass warmed by hands,
Fragile, deliberate, light held slow.
Every touch asked permission of silence,
Nothing shattered; everything chose to glow.

Later still—ink. We wrote on each other,
Marks that bled meaning instead of haste.
The body stopped being a door to pass through
And became a room we agreed to taste.

At last, the night loosened its grip on time.
Breath forgot to perform, shadows lay down.
I felt the ancient danger of remaining,
Of hunger kneeling, of crowns falling off crowns.

Love did not arrive as mercy or flame—
It arrived as the dark deciding to stay.
And the night, knowing it had won us both,
Closed its eyes—
And became morning's delay. - Pushp sirohi