I Never Asked How the Fire in Her Could be a Subtle Volcano by Prateek Joshi

As a bright spot

         Loved, as a  quaking asteroid

I answer

                         between the silence and her laughter

Echoes of the passing gas giant.

A pale sea

          sees me split

                               my heart

                                   over her uneasy rapture,

she says, “My sight stops, unearthed as it is, by questions raised for my racuousness.”

  • the sound of a black hole claws me from inside —

I draw her face

       (if only) it could withstand

the shattering earth for a better day

           tomorrow or an after-tomorrow 

May be for never-after,

                          I gaze, still,

                  into the expanding sky.

She bids goodbye

                 each time as if (it) were the last.

How do I explain the endless void

       or the ear-splitting emptiness on her departure?¿

                                Ask (her)

             if the numbness inside her can break 

the ice-capped boulders within mine.

Ask the solar sky,

                       and (I will) answer in the quietude of the twilight.


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