A sunset is not a sunset

If it does not bleed

The word in me not a word

Till it is beaten in my wordsmith’s forge.

That is why your absence shapes me

Your silence sears my heart

With the barbed wire of pain

Till words of blood ooze,

Ooze from the open wounds of my poetry.

Do you see the homeless child

On the pavement?

His eyes say he has wandered about

In the dry playground

Fondling with hunger and stones.

They say his father paid the price for being a Kashmiri

They say his mother shares the five biscuits

Keeping only one for herself.

They say that justice comes late in some countries

If they come at all.

His eyes confirm his conversation with the sea

when it is most trapped by its lonely season.

That is the reason, my love,

a sunset is not a sunset

if it does not bleed.

That is the reason your absence shapes me

your silence sears my heart

with the barbed wire of pain

till words ooze out drops of blood.

That is the sole reason

Why my poems run red…