By: Archita Mittra

when you sing to mountain dust &
wild-eyed streetcars streaking
through winding darkness-wearing roads,
your skin lit by van gogh stars,
a stain slowly swirling across your painted
lips, of the last square of chocolate
(from the box your drunken dangling legs
had kicked aside), a ribbon hanging
loose in your windswept hair ( teach me
will you, to untangle the vines of identities
clinging onto the rusty, crumbling
walls of my heart)

for a while, i smell home-
our ghosts waltz & shimmer,
moonlight dancing off your face
(you are telling me a joke i shall
forget, eyes tracing the fleeting
patterns that your mouth makes
with every syllable)

till it returns, like wind or comets-
this longing to amputate
the phantom limb of love
on nights like these.

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Archita Mittra is a wordsmith, visual artist with a love for all things vintage and darkly fantastical. A student of English Literature at Jadavpur University, she also has a Diploma in Multimedia and Animation from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. Her work has appeared or been profiled in The Statesman, Thought Catalog, Maudlin House, Rising Phoenix Review, Luna Luna Magazine and elsewhere. She also serves as the Poetry Editor at Quail Bell Magazine, occasionally practises as a tarot card reader and is still waiting for The Doctor and the TARDIS to show up.