November is the season for la flâneuse | Srishti Dutta Chowdhury

the yellow-dimpled air has this milky chubbiness, tonight,

as i,
count dust from your stars,
my feet feel cold
homeward northbound backgroundradio

turning caramel
flicking an orange-burnt tongue
leftrightrightleft

my lips 
sting, from
the distance they sense,
from your smoky oesophagus

my jaws
slacken from awaiting the 5 o’clock shadow,
i t s n o t d e n s e e v e n i n g j u s t y e t
that splashed against yellow 
skin

my carotid 
bleed from striving to listentowhispers about your
dreams arranged carefully,
in the twigs of
bonsai

snapped easily between my
stubby fingers

and my tin-eardrums
split from dreamingnutsanddragons and pint-sized happiness that flutterred around my
collarbones
hearing your cycle click and stack against
the blue wall, a airy-pile-of-lightness-resigned,

bareblue wall, dareblue wall
stripped-of-colour-where-your-woodhandle-rested

my cornea
has wept nights from longing to measure your finger-veins-like-leaves against my own
stubbiness

toolate toolate toolate
it’s too late

for me to
throw-off-the-weight-of-this-wanderlust-and-wannaknowitall-thirst,
for me to
grab green fingers and merge
destinations

iknowthisnowthat
all the sand has seeped through
fingers-of-glass

each second is just a blue-green fluid,
squirming in-my-lousy-thick-hand
every dream of walking with you falls
behind
and the orange sun turns grey,

my mind turns away
intent-to-catch-the-meanderingnewodour-in-the-breeze,

i-forget-what-it-is-i-was-so-intently-thinking-of-as-i-run-to-catch-the-shadow-of-a-silver-eyed-dragon-kite

my salvation lies in drifting away not
gripping-hard-redfat-knuckles-white.

 A student of Comparative Literature for most part of the day, Srishti Dutta Chowdhury reads, listens to whatever catches her fancy and writes a tad bit whenever she cannot do without putting some words to paper. She has been published at Coldnoon Travel Poetics, Muse India, Bangalore Review, AntiSerious, Quail Bell, the Brown Critique magazine, the Norwich Radical, Kindle, etc. Besides reading, writing, living poetry, she fancies herself as a food philanderer and keenly follows food photography. Her photography can be viewed at the Instagram handle ”srishtiduttachowdhury”.