Bust | Prarthana Vijayakumar

a thought walks into a skeet ground

falls to its knees in tune

                to the doomsday broadcast,

that stone pelters reverse strafed over themselves

                through my window

                see me pulling my leg out of gravity

//

they are all dead now

        twelve of them are reading the sky 

        and the rest of them don’t believe 

a silent god can sing or

an empty threshold hums with earthquakes

//

your barbell tongue,

                i want the dead weight down on me

wrenching down a thousand stories as you sink           

//

this is the saltiest i’ve ever smelt

haunting throngs my skin,

        sickle out the yearning and grasping          

        i will fill an entire boneyard with the skeletons

        of an anthology embalmed 

in the november wind

//

                embalmed by the wind

i’m now sick but in the way flowers coo my name       

who am i to berate a starless sky?

grab some clay and dress it

in your unnamed daughter’s finery

//

what a fitting end to a poet, and a subpar one at that