Poetry

Rituals of Burning

by Oindri Sengupta

I’ve kept all the rituals of burning
at your door.
When time was inside,
all the ceremonial rapture of seasons,
the first sound of your heart
dropped as rain on my back.
And all that laid in-between shadow and light
became the hour of spring.
As it ransacked your house,
I fiddled with tears on your fingertips
and brought a century inside a minute.
What if all the ripeness that grew inside a flower
was actually the mind that traveled from me to you?
Then the fire that flowered on your brows
would eventually fall on me like stars on water.
And I would unfurl as wind does
in the face of a storm.

Appeared in Issue Spring '23