By Ashima Mishra
In this city, where shadows stretch wide
I wander aimlessly through jagged echoes
air thick with dreams half-formed,
caught between - neither a city nor home.
The body is the house of the soul,
and this city's skin is cracked and peeling,
where lost hopes cling like festering scars,
suspended in silence, heavy with decay
The dead candor in a passerby's gaze,
the city’s skin, parched pavement,
grey scars of lost dreams that rise
like vapor rising, breath held in containment
They say we shed every cells over years—
a quiet rebirth, skin sloughed and renewed,
always changing, the body always becoming.
but this city? It clings to its own bones,
hoarding each layer of brittle flesh,
clenching tight to sinews of worn-out hopes.
It inhales dreams like a lung gasping for air,
layer upon layer settling deep in its chest,
the heft of shadowed hope thickening its chest,
while loss pools like blood beneath bruised skin.
Its veins echo with faded dreams, pulsing slow—
and though its heart beats, it’s never quite whole;
(the heart is the house of the body, they say,
but this city’s heart has never known solace).
The sun, in its blazing certainty, yields,
softening heat to the moon’s gentle pull,
but the potholes here stay unhealed,
no matter the prayers, no matter how full
Summer leaves its melting shadow,
a glistening tear carving down its weathered face
a howl from the wild, a call toward you.
and I dream of reaching for the sky, breaking this haze.
Icarus, they say, flew too close—
reckless, too bold, but when the sky beckons,
offering freedom with the burn of the sun,
who can resist, despite the fall?
The soft clouds whisper, a siren's song,
pulling me gently to drift from despair,
but the streets of this city are stitched into me,
edges are filled with its cracks and its wear
"Tomorrow," I whisper to clouds,
"We will dream once again."
Oh, dear city, hold me with care,
let me rise and fall in your arms,
unaware.