A White girl figure with a blank face and
a dress cropped over her knees lays
smeared flatly onto a restroom door;
a black star encrusted shoe kicks open the
Door.
In comes a knocking the delusions
of grandeur that stay suspended in the
Fragrance of workaholic soccermoms.
In one of the bathroom stalls
swims a ****** rosemary, teenage midlife-crisis
Averted. Theses tests were ironically
positive for the genesis of an unborn
Icon. I might have just used the wrong definition of irony.
Moving on. A hand flushes
the remanents of immortality down a sparkling, smiling toilet.
Rolled poems become unscrolled
when writeen on the pampered virgins paper.
In the next stall,
there lives substance for the homeless man
in the deep, brown soil
Of the marsh. A trash can is hunched over the sink,
attempting to dispense it’s
Apathy for a commercial world.
He turns the corner and sees writeen on the wall in
legible, abstract graffetti; “Ugliness is shrouded
under layers of positive
contradictions.” The words are engraved
deep into the cracked out, white tile wall.
Socialist Olympic torches blaze before ash
crumbles into communists tendencies.
The water is clear but the benches
are polluted with foreigner sea ****,
and
beneath the jangled sands
lie the zombies stuffed deep in the black body bags.

I shall have to let you go

Your petals faded pink,
barely staining parchment
your saturate colour unsummered

Those annual visits of
birds, bees, the painted
butterflies, giddy for
our sticky stamens,
spread our playfulness
across the fields

Autumnal colours
your pink, my grey,
wilted, limp, harbinger
of winter and away

Remember flower your
spring stalk, surging power
lifted to air.

You shall have to let me go
my painting, partner
unscrolled, a single
flash, illuminating
lightning

Done and gone

It was chanted for five Sabbaths in a row
in the small synagogue with the charred bimah,
ashes staining the tzitzits of the rebbe’s tallit,
as he raised his arms above his head, closed his eyes
and sang the first alaf of seven thousand dabars,
the oral memory passed down six generations,
a psalm for a hundred sabas and savtas,  
abbas and eemas, nursery rhymes for ben and bat,
stopping, receding, picked up again, one by one
from cantor to congregant in a low moan
until all nine hundred thousand silenced voices
of Treblinka sang in the knesset’s bright light.  
    

bimah-  lectern from which the Torah is unscrolled on
tzitzit- the knotted fringes of a Hebrew prayer shawl
tallit- a Hebrew prayer shawl worn by rabbis
alaf- the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet
dabar- Hebrew for word
saba- grandfather
savta- grandmother
abba- father
eema- mother
ben- son
bat- daughter
knesset- the members of a synagogue

That day…
when time paused mid-breath,
nd fate unscrolled its ancient scroll
you walked past me like a verse I was yet to read,
unknowingly planting roots in soil I’d long left barren.

That day…
our eyes crossed paths like rivers recognizing each other
from lifetimes ago…. no lightning, no thunder,
just a silence that echoed louder than any hello.

That day…
you spoke… not much, but enough to stir
a forgotten song inside me.
Your voice was not new; it was remembered.
Like da temple bell’s chime at dawn,
it felt like home I never knew I missed.

That day…
we laughed, hesitantly, like rain meeting parched land.
nd I, a skeptic of this syllabus called destiny,
surrendered to a chapter I didn’t plan to write.

That day…
you called me for da first time,
and I pretended it was casual !!!
but my heartbeat betrayed da script...
It raced like Krishna's chariot on Kurukshetra’s edge,
knowing a war of emotions had already begun!!!

That day…
your texts felt like mantras… small, sacred,
capable of silencing storms.
Who knew pixels on a screen
could feel warmer than touch?

That day…
we became friends - no,
we remembered that we were friends,
from some forgotten yuga
when Draupadi wept nd Krishna bled,
nd promises were not spoken
but soul-carved.

That day…
we fought. Words became arrows.
Eyes turned away,
nd my world… dimmed.
But like da Ganga always finds her way,
so did we - back to each other.
Bcz what’s meant,
was never meant to break.

That day…
we realized this bond isn’t made of time.
It is carved in cosmic dust,
where gods whisper tales of pairs like us
not just friends in common language,
but saanjhe rooh ke safar-saathi.

That day…
you held space for me.
Without touching, you touched.
Without asking, you knew.
Without promises, you stayed.

And today…
as college gates threaten closure,
nd corridors echo with last bell rings,
I do not mourn da ending
for how can one grieve a story
that never needed a beginning?

We….
are not a just campus tale.
We are da hidden verse
between Krishna’s flute nd Draupadi’s silence.
We are not goodbye.
We are always.

So, let da walls fade,
let da uniforms fold,
let routines dissolve
but us,
don’t you dare call this an ending.

Bcz no matter da cities,
no matter da silence,
some friendships are written
in Vedic ink nd starlight,
meant to outlive calendars
and remain…
Eternal,
Unclicked,
But never unloved.
                                        By: - Kanishk

Hear me not, yet feel my breath,
A susurrus etched in ebon shale.
What lingers whispers not of death,
But wraith-song borne on ashen gale.

The oculus is veiled in dust,
The portal gapes, the vow untrue.
Where halls resound with vacant trust,
The dawn distorts, the dusk imbues.

Their sigil scorned, their tale unscrolled,
Yet dunes consume the steps they laid.
The firmament withdraws its hold,
The zephyrs parch, the rivers fade.

Those who wander, sight unblessed,
Shall tread where embered tongues entwine.
No benison to break their rest,
But ossuary rites divine.

The balance tilts, the judgment wends,
Anubis veers, the soul unmoored.
Bound in dust, where silence bends,
Their final dirge remains assured.

Flesh is a threshold, spirit a lure,
Reft of the tithe the dead bequeath.
Let cindered runes in soot endure,
And waken that which dwells beneath.

The shade in vapor, the wraith in brine,
A vestige veiled in void’s embrace.
Ereshkigal, in requiem shrine,
Release the one who waits in place.

Shroud them in umbra, tether them deep,
What stirs in stillness must not rise.
By fractured spire and oath to keep,
Let what was sealed now blind its eyes.

Yet egress wanes, and pyres expire,
What walks must dwindle, what calls must bind.
A whisper lost, a rite conspired,
The gyre undone, the fates entwined.

Flesh is a sepulcher, spirit the key,
Seal what has drifted, what yet remains.
So I murmur, so let it be,
The veil is fallen, none speak the name.