This city as punctuation

I frame this city in untold stories. But it
wants to be a poet, fitting my life into
six rhyming couplets that soften the
consonants of its dark. Mornings, we

swap metaphors and endings. It says
love is the hyphen between its sacred
peepal trees. This is an old trick, turning to
punctuation when words are scarce. It is

the eighth lunar month. Outside every
door, oil lamps burn. The wind holds its
hands around them like safe parentheses. I
search for spaces. The space you occupied.

The space between your arms. The space
between possibility and semicolon. Between
being and full stop. Where does the
emptiness end? Where does the next sky

begin? This city strikes a bell like a tercet.
Thrice. Like an ellipsis. The silence
between us tastes of missing apostrophes.
It draws faith as three question marks.

***

Sharing this poem from my new book ‘Duplicity’, published in September. 
Both print and kindle editions are available on Amazon. Also listed on Kobo. More information and links here.