Fear flows sometimes
and spurts on some days
out from the warm orifices
in the sleep-deprived sweat glands.

A thirst ridden tongue
has a memory of its own.
It dreams of the dirt
and the sweet hymns of an unending rain.

The flag still hangs on my wall
but they keep washing out blood from it.

My hands are tired of holding the bodies I cannot touch.
Another celestial rotation, a swirl of nothingness :

They have made me a man full of unwritten elegies,
who stares into the abyss rhyming a voiceless song of grief.

© Shashank Bhardwaj