The Spring Rain, Stray Bullet

She took three days
to accept his proposal
for the first date.

The boy caught a stray bullet
on the Sunday
of the first week of Spring.
He wire white, and white turned pink.

Her love was born while reading
the news of the death.
The words rested cold
on the slab of the paper,
and she nodded an acknowledgement

even though she never dated
him, and knew next to nothing,
she could identify the right corpses.
Streetlights zigzaged in the rain.

She rose from her porch chair
and realised
that in order to send a drunken signal
to one’s limbs
one need not drink a drop of wine.

Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor