A poem by Trivarna Hariharan

Birds flew like a blur on the wind, a false note in an accarezzevole. Time waltzed to unmatched staccatos. Streets called your name out in resistance. Leaves drew themselves away from the winter heat, made themselves homes in the crevices of spindly roofs. Spring approached with vermilion trees in an unpainted sky. Your eyes—the shade of a half-moon, heaved through an orbit of broken stars. The snow on your back singed like a forgotten lullaby as your fingertips scratched across shadowy lanes in an attempt to find home.

I reminded you then that it was a long time ago I had watched you dance like a road hanging in mid-air, grass learning how to keep its green.

But I forgave you for not knowing what it meant to stop.

The way rain pours in autumn now reminds me of you – metronomes in a songless night, footsteps on an empty horizon, a silent knock on the doors of houses no one lives in anymore.

Trivarna Hariharan is an author whose work appears or is forthcoming in various literary magazines such as Textploit, On The Rusk, Allegro Poetry, Writers Asylum, Literature Studio, TheOriginalVanGoghsEarAnthology, A Penny for a Thought, Orange Almonds, The Criterion, The Bougainvillea Lit Road Magazine, Mad Swirl, Tuck Magazine, Life In 10 Minutes, The Quail Bell Magazine, CultureCult, Tangerine Heart Lit Zine, Vigilante Publications, Germ Magazine, Paper Lens Zine, and elsewhere. She serves as the editor in chief at Inklette, the poetry reader for Sprout, and is the Head Officer for Journalism at Redefy. Her first poetry collection “Home and Other Places,” is being published by Nivasini Publishers, and is slated for a 2016 release.She believes strongly in the power of art to bring about a change in the world.