This nothingness was overwhelming.
When words fail to tell the facts,
only silence talks.

That brutal interrogation of self
to undo the decline, like a
a viper in your home.

The mortgaged glow of stoned infant
in the exiled land, brings
the exodus of shrunken legs.

A shadow survives on the debris
of frozen voices,
sluicing through the cries.

Open the stitches of night.
Death was skirting the prison.
No ropes. No ropes.

Satish Verma