AIR WAS NAKED

After the putsch, through night he set himself alight 
ensnared in flames of societal conflicts, for a 
vision of tomorrow, in the birth of a bloody dawn. 
The drone of history had failed on a loaded salt. 

A solitary murder of truth was sufficient to unsettle 
me for a downturn of unborn wounds of drowned 
voice, of a requiem. The dead were coming back to life 
in dark alleys of black skulls. The pink scarves 

were still holding the snow flakes of standing 
wheat for the thirsty children, of grieving mothers 
who lost the homes to red hands, the white paper, 
the hungry guns. The thieves were coming again. 

I was never naked in my blood, my howling bones.

Satish Verma