The Tongue

Someday

years later

I will come

carrying my broken self

on my back

walking across this road

once washed with blood

to look for my forked

tongue lost

somewhere between my rights

and the laws of sedition

on the slippery floors

of a siyaasat forever burnishing

the blades of a guillotine.

Bone Furniture

The creaking chair
has so absorbed
the frail, old man

reclining still on it
that he looks
like an apparition

trying desperately
to fill in a vacant space.
Head bent low,

his lean, drooping hands
merge into the armrests;
his skeletal frame

shrinks awkwardly
into a furniture of bones.
The chair turns

into a wooden version
of a man slumped
down on all his fours.

Like two shadows
embracing each other
at the twilight hours,

and the sagging skin
of darkness gently covering
the furniture of bones

like a warm piece of blanket.

Breathe

Barging into this
old, dilapidated house

through the rusted
iron-grilled window,

sunlight cuts itself
into long slices

of slant silver bars;
shining particles of dust

dancing inside. The window
throws its arms wide open

drawing in clouds, rains
and a blue patch

of the sky. A tiny creeper
dares to sneak into the room,

its green tendrils
coiling around the grills.

A butterfly strays in
riding a rainbow.

The suffocating house
slowly learns

to breathe through the window.