Sunday, 8 June 2025

Stranger Earth

 





I don’t know this city without your footprints

marking out the roads, buildings, the streetlights

glinting on your glasses, your voice mapping

the terrain of neighbourhoods, days and nights.

I don’t know this place, it’s strangely different –

the waters an acrid shade of grey and white,

the neon signs of advertisements pulsing

like a news ticker from a disaster site.

Everything is where it was, yet it isn’t

as if the ground has shifted, ever so slight,

as if the earth’s somehow lost its mooring,

as if the sky’s fallen from a great height.

Grief is a half done crossword by your chair,

an absence the shape of your feet on the stairs.







9 comments:

  1. Hari OM
    ...and it has no timetable... YAM xx

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    Replies
    1. yeah, can strike whenever and wherever, home or away... <3

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  2. And a hole in the heart that never fills..

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  3. Replies
    1. Even in the normal course of time, grief accelerates that feeling...

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  4. You captured grief perfectly. I had a moment watching the Tony Awards for theater. I used to always call my dad during a commercial break and discuss the music, the show numbers, etc. I missed that this year....sigh.

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  5. "Grief is a half done crossword by your chair, an absence the shape of your feet on the stairs." This is so poignant and beautiful.

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