---

How illness gnaws a person

in the cracks of the heart,

the drumstick tree is chopped down

on a late summer day.

He knows how the crumpling legs

would have waited for him in a yellow dress,

under the dispersed shadows of the lane,

those phantoms still rove inside him,

he hopes each day and each night

in mumbling pains of what might

wait for his dead-leaf life in serendipity.

It’s another day under a sun-baked lane,

under rustling, thick dry leaves,

under the bygone peace of ancestors 

under the fragile wish to see again

the face in the mirror, under a sun-baked lane.

He desires to leave before the world,

under a serene morning in a drongo’s warbling,

to prevent himself from their watery eyes,

but he opposes leaving before the world 

desiring to witness how those eyes shed tears

after he ceases to crunch on the garden.

It’s not possible either way, either sense, either path.

It’s strange to be caught in an endless dilemma,

in endless dilemmas.

---

Suman Mondal is a poet and student from West Bengal, India. His philosophical poems have been featured in The Statesman, a well-respected Indian newspaper, and most recently in its prestigious festival issues (2024 & 2025). His other works have been published in Lekh Magazine, Faith Hope & Fiction, Spillwords, Brief Wilderness, Literary Yard, Apotheca Journal, Bharat Patriotism Magazine, Exclamation Mark Literary Journal, and Ultramarine Literary Review. He was shortlisted for the Young Writers’ Weekly Prize (2025) and has presented academic research on existential alienation and absurdity at a national seminar at St. Xavier’s College, Burdwan. Currently, he is pursuing an honours degree in English literature at Rampurhat College.