Sukriti Patny
Stormbird
The birds are waiting for you
at the bridge. Will you learn
their names or will you turn away?
My point is there is no point
in looking at the past or waiting.
At the end of the road, the moon
-stones are urging me to have
faith, but what of the rain that shatters
against the glass all day? Thunder turns
me into the shadow of a dark cloud.
Maybe the picnic blanket
I abandoned will shoot up like a cork
tree and strangle me. Maybe it has already
forgotten me. In the apartment above,
they tear down walls and tear down
woven baya nests. Time is a ruin buried in
the dust of their indecision. How far
will they dig to reach their graves?
Make me a mural. Make me
anything. You wait for me – I see you
like the birds. Will you teach me
how to take flight?
Sunset with Rhetorical Question
The sky is a lavender
field set ablaze and
bats the breadth
of the apocalypse
fly past our faces.
I am a breath
away from burning
down the city.
Hand me a scalpel
to dig the stardust
out of my body.
If I am to believe
the coppersmith
barbet, to bleed
is the only way
out of this maze.
You follow the call
of the hurricane, all
the way to the rusting
river but Grief cannot
cross the equator.
What is a marriage
if not two people
who want terribly
different things?
One Last Poem for Bombay
after Sandra Cisneros
Someday we’ll forget I ever lived inside you – my heart
beating to the rhythm of your snarl. Running on the fumes
of humidity, and the smell of impossible dreams. The way you
held me when I was lonely with claps of thunder and the lilt
of traffic at four a.m. on your sleepless streets. The way you took
my regret and turned it into salted caramel dripping from your
fingers and fed it back to me, sating the crevices that creak
in my tired body. The way time was a little keychain strung
in my fingers, and the stars were broken cobblestones beneath
the sea. Someday we’ll be okay that my life has become
a souvenir – a hollow shell that echoes.
Sukriti Patny is a poet by dawn, and an overthinker by day. Her work explores the intersection of emotion and the body and hopes to highlight the reverence that nature invokes in her. Her poetry has been published in Humana Obscura, Gather, wildscape literary journal, and The Turning Leaf Journal. She currently lives in India with her husband and her anxiety. Connect with her on Instagram @wordsbysu and Substack @sukritipatny.
Artwork: “Barnacle Storm” by Daniel Lurie
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