Saturday, 1 November 2025

Poetry 2025 Longlist, Chandrama Deshmukh

For Those Who Don’t Sleep at Night


There are things

that only reveal themselves

after midnight

like the faint scent of copper

in a memory,

or how grief,

when left undisturbed,

oxidises into silence.

Some nights

I don’t lie awake.

I conduct stillness

like mercury holds shape

without spilling,

like iron remembers

every hand that held it

too tightly.

This is not insomnia.

This is alchemy.

The nervous system

releasing its old alloys.

A quiet forge

where I become

less brittle,

more elemental.

I’ve stopped trying

to be daytime people

the kind who gleam

like polished silver.

I am rust,

I am residue,

I am what remains

when the fire goes out

but the warmth stays.

Don’t ask me

why I’m still up.

Ask instead

what it means

to carry questions


like carbon

invisible,

essential,

burning slow.

If you’re awake,

you are not alone.

There are others like us

upstream of sleep,

where gold is still soft,

and the night

doesn’t ask for answers.

Only presence.

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