akshay a.s.

Grey
adjective - without interest or character; dull and nondescript.

a sky that turns grey as grey can be grey like the lingering drops of rain wringed out of a grey cloud bleeding through the sky leaking from the grey of a stranger's eye the iris glimpsed in some lost moment lost tragically lost calamitously lost never to be seen again that grey tint of a tear grey like unhinged earth like the pit corpse grey funeral grey cemetery grey corpse funeral cemetery death grey the color of death as dead as dead can be dense grey suffocating pyre smoke grey the color of helplessness that grey of dust of misery of missing someone and then the grey of silence mute grey mundane grey silence mute mundane the worst grey of no use to no one no knockout drubbings of white no soothing caresses of black no just a nudge as gentle as the fall of grey hair towards a sky that turns grey as grey can be

Winter

Once buzzing,
the now signature silence of these trifling days,
these cobblestone roads of my wit
and its current cold abandonment.
The smoky scent of a single cup of chai.
Overcast in the better shades of blue-grey and windy.
Windows boarded up since before February,
left alone to the mites.
No inhabitants except me and the locusts,
not biblical, thoroughly godless.

But in this isolation, as night rolls around,
a blanket of freedom cloaks over me.
Overwhelming liberation
from the tiresome ways of humankind.

𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘦 𝘭'𝘢𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘰 𝘧𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘪𝘢—
As though love itself was like a plague,
let it wash over this empty December street of mine,
let it drain me of faces
and the souls seep into my ink,
let them find a new home in my poetry,
for people, no more, have place
in the thoroughfares of my heart.

Only the plague remains.

Shall We?

To

breathe

in tandem

to a spiraling sense

of nothingness. 4:48, psychosis hour,

the familiar taste of nicotine, only known kin.

Long walks that used to help; yellowish streetlight

invading the twilight blue of the pavement, splashes of green and pink

and thoughts about the end.

Is it death to pace this march in deafening solitude?

Or is death to want for a companion in the first place, when even alone,

the clock runs out long before the Circumference even breaks the horizon?

The constant ringing, like nails hammered into the eardrum

and on the other end of the telephone line,

something comfortingly similar to death waits

for the receiver to be picked up.

The footsteps speak no more.

The final wisp of smoke caresses the air,

vanishes, leaves the cigarette bud to die.

To stranger, lover

or an old friend, regardless,

how does one

answer a call,

except with

a hello?