Too late.
The bridges have been bombed and passionate tongues
cauterized.
Should I keep shoving
these scrawled messages
into the cracked plaster?
Or just walk away
into the unhinged calendar?
On the other side
the crowd is gnawing
at the plexiglass seams
braying for sustenance
nobody can give them.
Tenderness has no place here.
The long lineage
of gentle touch severed
by jagged images of the instant.
And the long memory,
vessel of respite
that gave us the strength
to endure long lines at the food pantry
and cruelties unspeakable,
is buried like a jar of moths.
No two mouths
will ever meet each other with conviction again.
This work originally appeared in the print edition of Locust Review #7.
Mitali Das, Mahallya, Mixed-media on canvas (2019).
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