The Obedient Stone
The water, soft as memory,
finds me still — tunneling through sand,
through the hush of six obedient feet. It
hums like a prayer, or oblivion.
Once, your warmth was the season I lived in. Now
cold is my companion —
its fingers, gentler than yours, and they
never lie.
A moth, pale and blind,
has risen from the quiet earth beside me. It
carries what I could not:
the rumor of light.
My hair — once your tangled worship — has
loosened into dust.
The shirt you gave me blooms
its worms and stains,
each one a syllable of your name.
The eyes that once sought you are
hollows now —
two moons chewed to nothing.
Still, they dream of your amber eyes.
And in this dark theatre of my skull,
maggots perform their tender work. I
whisper to them:
take the mind,
but leave the heart —
it is the only faithful thing,
the red lantern that will not go out.
But who listens in the soil?
Even silence forgets its duty.
Beloved, I wait for you
beneath this obedient stone,
beneath the name carved clean and final.
Come — unbury me with your touch, the
same hands that planted the dagger,
that sowed me in this sleep.
Bring the dawn with you.
Even a ghost remembers the
shape of light.
The Anchor
The stars begin to fade in a distant corner of the
sky. The melancholy robin calls from a tree —
a final hymn for the night,
who turns her departure into an elegy.
And I, still galloping through this wild forest.
You said, “Come save me.”
That plea is the spur in my horse’s flank —
the only compass I own in this uncharted land.
I see you in the far, dissolving clouds.
I feel you in the breeze that finds me
now. I hear your voice among the birds,
and sense you in the leaves that touch my skin.
But my dear,
grief has coiled around my
neck, fangs bared, tightening
until I cannot look back.
Sadness digs into my heart —
a dagger twisted, merciless.
My mind has been chewed to nothing
by the teeth of agony.
Yet I must go on, for you, my dear,
even when these limbs scream in agony.
And now, look at you —
once the girl who cried, “Save me,”
now a silent weight behind me on this horse,
a cold anchor in the galloping storm.
Even in death, I will save you.
I will carry us both
to the end of the world.
As the promise I
kept, For you, with
you.
The Labyrinth of Suffering
And here I am —
chained in this dark, cold room,
pressed against the metal ribs
of this asylum.
The rusty fan speaks to me now
in a language of cycling grief.
The shattered window whispers
a name —
a name I can’t remember.
Empty medicine bottles watch from the table;
their hollow eyes filled with ghosts —
ghosts of those
who once believed in redemption.
The calendar on the wall
no longer holds meaning — only numbers now,
fading,
like the ability to see through time.
My only roommate — once an eight-legged friend —
rests as a skeleton in the corner.
His eyes, hollows.
My pen bleeds red upon the page;
my books have forgotten my
touch.
Here, in this labyrinth of
whispers, my screams still scream
—
Though my tongue has worn itself
away beneath the shock
of their electric mercy.
My eyes ache,
stitched shut by trembling hands.
My legs, once dancers of sunlight, lie broken like glass across the floor.
My hands still dream of the pen,
but they have forgotten how to write.
And so, I wait.
My heart, stubborn and slow,
still dreams of an angel —
one who will pass through this iron door,
a vial of toxin trembling in her hand.
Only then,
perhaps, will I
escape —
this labyrinth of suffering,
this asylum built
not of walls,
but of memory.
About the Author
Vishnu Raj is a poet from Kerala, currently based in Bahrain. These poems are his first work submitted to any of major literary magazines. The poet writes from silence rather than study, despite having any literary lineage to his name, he used language as a means of survival. These poems are not a mere portrait of grief, but the aftermath of what comes after it. A journey after the chaos had sunken deep down, where mourning became metamorphosis, and loss is rendered luminous through seasons, memory, and light. The poems are taken from his chapbook – The Shape of Light, his first work.
