A Gathering of the Tribes

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Purbasha Roy

Notes on How we can be Everywhere but not Together

The day began the way days begin
I am not explained how migrations happen without bodies
mother says my attention has rinsed itself dry
so I work double-shifts inside silence
my shadow chooses become something else:
a river swallowed by a city and the remains
are the gorgeous poem middles that shift
and leave a colourless absence, also breathless
I begin to forget time and how it keeps
mysteries unlike meanings in language
by what latitudes of separateness are measured
when body prefers stay out of consideration
you stand upon the bridge and I stare at your reflection
now we are in close contact like planets and satellites
travelling in nakedness of parallelisms
when I listen to the falling sunshine on porch
I imagine you there, not all sounds condense
but yours do, my wild grief softens and becomes
the first dew of season that fevers my dreams
when we lick to be in the moment we claimed ours
it slipped to a frameless nowhere

Purbasha Roy is a writer from Jharkhand India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Channel, SUSPECT, Space and Time, Strange Horizons, Long Con and Stray Lights magazines. She attained second position in the 8th Singapore Poetry Contest and is a Best of the Net Nominee.