Bending over clouds
We are dunked, face first
Into the broken arteries of Kolkata:
Dissected torso of a civilization, blinking back

A vanishing sunset sprints
below a network of lacklustre lakes
suspended in time
Green stillness festering in colonial wounds

Our fingers trace her desiccated tributaries, desolate perimeters
Brittle sentences from a lost fable breaking at the seams
While miniaturised humanity rearranges
its beginning and end

A new story foaming
At the mouth of its river
Yearning for reinterpretation
from citizens in the sky

We realise
Mid-sentence and mid flight
are the same things
spoken skywards