Unknotting

By Basudhara Roy

I open the heart’s cage and let fly

a hundred pigeons into the endless sky,

the impatient beating of their wings

a reminder that under the shroud of silence,

life’s restlessness still lives

and the flesh, flawed and frail as it is,

is wooed to raptures

by a single spell of rain.

In my hands are a few grains

of time that I am feeding to love.

In a season of faith, the future holds no fear.

I take all I am given today

without fretting over tomorrow.

This day’s charity, this moment’s leisure

must have a name I ache to utter.

With its quiet glory, I brand my heart.

Basudhara Roy

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Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Her latest poems are featured in The Woman Inc., Madras Courier, Lucy Writers Platform, Berfrois, Gitanjali and Beyond and The Aleph Review among others. Her recent (second) collection of poems is Stitching a Home (New Delhi: Red River, 2021). She loves, rebels, writes and reviews from Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India.

• Basudhara Roy

  Bathing an Old Woman