Poetry 2014 Featured Writer, Akila Gopalakrishnan

As if there is a full stop to where words take me

Ripples
swell my contours
amidst conversations, draped casual
as I envelope the events emerging
from folds of time, into this minute
swinging the present and a past

How I steal
time to confront
when left, to count the autumn petals
in black and white frames       

The wind flutters
gathering embers,
while I succumb to dictated ironies
of my four year old’s innocence

Often more than not
I journey with words
and yet,
how some are left to drift
with that faraway boat
disappearing into the horizon

If only
I could paint contrasts
on a window,
halved to open and close together -
sunrise and sunset,
the unseen void lives accepted and
light streams in, nevertheless