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Battlefields dot my maps, 

 

I have forgotten the grammar to locate

my home, only fields frozen 

in thick blood

endlessly stretch in front of me; 

my skin has become a canvas of wounds
 

each scar drawn, painted, carefully, over time, 

by a fascist King. Red. Crimson. 

Black-dried rose petals. Except blue.

 

Horses gallop brewing dust from the fields,

clouds of dust rise up towards the topaz sky, 

long lost sunlight rots on my skin – in Kyiv 

lovers hold between their lips the last promise

of dawn.

Dawn, like meaning, slips away – constantly. 

I cling to the words you once doodled on my skin,

your scalpel had dug too deep in some places,

 

refreshingly, had reopened apertures of pain: 

stored, accumulated from before birth, 

spilling over, aching across countless after-lives.
 

Memories of passionate moon-leaked nights 

are weaved under my skin – covered in blood;

 

nights we have spent kissing each other,

hungrily, 

before detonating the enemy mines, 

before firing at one another, mercilessly.

We have always made love in turbulent times, 
 

lying across the no-man’s land,

a multitude of borders zigzagging over us,

our skin flayed, dried, stitched to design atlases,

a thousand ships sailing over our blood

to lay siege on Ilium,

– Achilles, we are destined to die.

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Aadrit, born and brought up in Kolkata, loves to dream. He writes, or at least he tries to, in his leisure hours, typing out words – staring blankly at the smartphone screen, or scribbling them on the margins of his college notebooks. Presently pursuing his undergraduate degree in English Hons. from the University of Delhi, he loves to paint, read and write poetry. Find him on Instagram @aadritbanerjee and on Twitter @AadritBanerjee.