By Amrita Sharma

Numb

When the human touch had lost its feel,
To a perpetual cold that embraced within,
In a morbid dusk with a timeless trail,
A residue rests on a shining slate.

The burning frames had left no marks,
The scattered hues no longer seized,
Across a lens of refracting poles,
A coded sequence guards each name.

Amidst a storm that holds a voice,
Not born out of the phoenix ash,
That failed to morph to a distant form,
A flight conforms to sinking norms.

With breaths turned to lifeless tides,
And silence turned to a deafening scream,
The craving turned to a fearful cry,
Turning numb now grips to heal.

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Record

A ‘screen’ may serve as a perfect sort,
That may turn to a ‘simile’ by a poet’s craft,
A greater may turn it to ‘metaphor’ still,
And a superior to a ‘symbol’ that holds a thought,
It may still form a ‘myth’ in the hands of a master.

I heard this trail from an Urdu scholar,
In a virtual session while taking a walk,
I didn’t have a paper or pen to note it then,
So I am noting it here just for a record.

A poetic trail that weaves a couplet,
Or an entire volume of lofty thoughts,
That unfolds across each circular path.

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Amrita Sharma is a Lucknow based writer currently pursuing her Ph.D. in English from the University of Lucknow. Her works have previously been published in Café Dissensus Everyday, Confluence: South Asian Perspectives, Women’s Web, Borderless, Tell Me Your Story, Muse India, New Academia, GNOSIS, Dialogue, The Criterion, Episteme and Ashvamegh. Her area of research includes avant-garde poetics and innovative writings in the cyber space.