I wouldn’t call it blue,
But this sun always tinges
a tad melodramatic
towards animals
sitting in matching cubicles
At dusk it spits dust
over their tarnished tweed jackets
They shake off,
like burnt timber,
the explosions of all the faces that
came near for a day,
all the evenings they pushed away
the epilogues,
end up with nothing but emptied checkbooks,
knowing they would gladly
call in that Band-aid friend

Instead we abandon the bridal aisle
with slippery eyes
Pieces of heart
left on corroded lips
play like dewdrops on sitar
Our bodies descending
from sweetness
into the pit of a great swallow
Isn’t it a tiny moon knocking on
skyscrapers?

Because home cannot save us,
Two strangers,
or lovers only through seven side looks
on a busy Monday,
wanting to haunt each other
from the hollows of turned doorknobs
of some ideal family
to the Armageddon
lying beyond
one imagined touch.

I pay the cab driver
and get off at the nearest
time zone to earth-
Narrow streets,
Poverty as graffiti on walls,
And nothing more to remind me
of proclaimed blue skies
but the caged smell of
another lost persona.

– Monosija Banerjee