black coffee on the table,
clean cold steel-chiselled Glock

loaded and placed in the bed-drawer.
The sharp wire that smells of the skins

and flesh it has strangulated. A black pair
of gumboots, a black overcoat, a black void

of past. A distant daughter who loves strawberries,
cats with abhorrence for your existence.

Cadillac, a pair to tan gloves, a love for silence,
love for the sight of eyes turning red, pleading

A packet of cigarettes, a bottle of Miller’s
An emptiness that spreads, a death that patiently lives.

© Shashank Bhardwaj