Homecoming / Epithalamion | Art Allein

I

Knocking on this door again,
I feel as if I’m drumming on my own chest and hearing
the rattle of something impaired. Everything I feel
feels inauthentic or ill-formed. I overtook him
without knowing and I who was always a mourner
for hire am self-employed.
Grief like ecstasy cramps
my arm and every suit on the central line outlives
him with every wheeze and tremble.

II

She was sitting gently
sinking without
sinking

in the pleated light
on half their bed. I saw
my mother in the clutch
of scented orchids
wearing her wedding
ring like a trance. Her joy

broken for keeps, a sob
breaking like a small bone in her throat.
I was a child
peering at the bedroom door,
I don’t lose sleep over the mercy of God.

She is in love, he is preserved
in love.

Art Allein is a young poet who hails from Kochi, India and now is studying for a Phd at the University of Oxford. Art’s poetry has previously appeared and is forthcoming in a number of national and international magazines including; The Irish Literary Review, The Amsterdam Quarterly, Wilderness House, The Oxonian Review, The Cadaverine, IS&T, Cake and Elbow Room.