each dark morning, my body falls under the spell of its ghost music, angling its desires sharper for head-on collision with disillusionment. my ribcage bursts with the fire of my undoing, the flames leaping haphazardly into the blue shimmer of nausea. the alphabet of ruin rustles down to the base of my skull where it lies shackled in unrest. sing me ballads of my people stirring & stirring their enthrallment into storm. my shadow, as it yodels loss into the mouth of rage, loses balance. i learn to hide my fears in my palimpsestic skin where it burns a gaping hole across the history you wrote for me in my antique blood. you bark orders into my spine & and it curves no more. over the mirror’s deluded ice cracks branch out to the echo of my tan you read as an aberration as a step closer to the inhuman. you wrap me up tight in your need for self-validation masquerading as kindness. your fingers knead my leftover trauma into dependence, the kind you recognise only when you start gasping for breath. you play at being a god, a master ventriloquist answering his own questions in a mock accent that fills everyone with wonder. i must be the shards of violence sticking in your throat as you pronounce me unholy.

      *

each dark morning, my body falls under the spell of its ghost music, angling its desires sharper for head-on collision with disillusionment. my ribcage bursts with the fire of my undoing, the flames leaping haphazardly into the blue shimmer of nausea. the alphabet of ruin rustles down to the base of my skull where it lies shackled in unrest. sing me ballads of my people stirring & stirring their enthrallment into storm. my shadow as it yodels loss into the mouth of rage loses balance. i learn to hide my fears in my palimpsestic skin where it burns a gaping hole across the history you wrote for me in my antique blood. you bark orders into my spine & and it curves no more. over the mirror’s deluded ice cracks branch out to the echo of my tan you read as an aberration as a step closer to the inhuman. you wrap me up tight in your need for self-validation masquerading as kindness. your fingers knead my leftover prayers into dependence, the kind you recognise only when you start gasping for breath. you play at being a god, a master ventriloquist answering his own questions in a mock accent that fills everyone with wonder. i must be the shards of violence sticking in your throat as you pronounce me unholy.

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Sambhu Ramachandran is a bilingual poet, translator, and fiction writer who spends his daylight hours as an Assistant Professor of English at N.S.S. College, Pandalam, Kerala. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Rust & Moth, The Comstock Review, The Talon Review, Cantos, The Fish Barrel Review, Two Thirds North, and The Bombay Literary Magazine, among several others. He lives in Kayamkulam, Kerala, where he attempts to capture the transience of the world through his writings and occasionally answers to @sambhuramachandran on Instagram.
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Picture Credits: Musa Ali Chaudhry