STAIRS

In the shell lies the eye of a dark sea
I call for a boat in delirium.
Waves drown the hunger of a climax.
I do not know where all the gulls have gone?

Time slips like flesh between the knuckles
and an extra pain of your separation.
I am shipwrecked on the slopes of whispers
and don’t want to have a second death.

Looking back at the years
as a sentence in exile,
I never reached the home.
Ultimately you need the hunchback to
climb the stairs.

Satish Verma