The sun is well into its spring U-turn, sends warm rays of regret for its winter absence.
A bee lands on a breeze-tossed petal, induces a golden butterfly to join him.
Dogs no longer just walk with their masters. They seek out each other, circling and sniffing.
A mockingbird on a rooftop advertises his wares in borrowed song.
Windows open. Chimneys are silent at last.
It’s the season when my fancy demands it be turned to something. Not love, necessarily. Lazing’s a good second choice.
Like Father, Like Son
A father, Frank going straight after a long history of drug offences –
and a son, Matt out on bail after a stash of cocaine discovered in his car by cops –
that’s the family scene, the one where Matt sneaks in and out of the house
or stays up in his room, eats his meals alone
and then, when they do run into each other, their tongues freeze up
but two pairs of hard angry eyes make contact,
as they both look deep into each other, see the same festering hungers, the same wretched desires, the same pathetic appetites that adulterate the family blood –
and they turn away in a shame disguised as a superiority –
“he’s turning out just like me,” thinks Frank –
“I’m turning out just like him,” thinks Matt –
from the disgusted looks on both their faces
you would never know they just agreed on something.
These Fine Children
They are perfect, middle of the night sleeping, middle of the day, thumping volleyballs across a net. Their faces are pure and lovely, just like yours at that age. The photos on your dresser are a history of how these moments came to be: your sly glance through the slightly ajar bedroom door, your full face at the parlour window. God’s creation? Maybe. Your creation? Is there any doubt. At night, alone at the kitchen table, coffee and a cigarette, a bottle of pain pills… if only their father were alive to see this. For all their glory, triumphs know their place.
Flowers for a Friend
The river’s all dolled up, with the sheen of skyscraper lights, some stars sprinkled here and there – the Hudson must be on its way to someplace special.
Your face flashes out of all others like a sudden appointment I’ve forgotten to miss, and the sirens – God, the sirens – it’s the sound of cops looking for something to do.
Someone (you?) says something. It’s hard to tell in a crowd. But I listen. And I believe.
A woman’s selling flowers that are so outrageously perfumed, like they’ve been reading French novels and wanted everyone to know.
I buy a bunch, hand them to you. You take them like you’re accepting a bill you already know you can’t pay. The river keeps going. We don’t. Not yet.
Passerby
You bring me pleasure. Ironic that. You could be a harpy, a bigot, a child murderer, for all I know.
You could be fool enough to think that a lovely face, long straw-coloured hair, a lithesome figure in a fluttering blue cotton dress is enough. Let me tell you. It is enough.
Yes, in my friends, I want all the virtues. But I look for beauty in my strangers.
Someone in the Fog
The fog is thick but I can just make out a person up ahead of me. Not the features, just the shape. Not the way of living, just the presence. I see what must be a head but not the knowledge. And a torso but no scars. Limbs but not what they bear up. I’ve just reached an understanding of who and what I am. But with other people, the fog rolls in.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Midnight Mind, Novus and Calliope. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I have spent years warding off evil from my chest. I’m convinced that my heart — once plump, pulping, and dramatically impaled by Cupid’s bow — has since flattened into a planchette.
I drag my planchette heart across ouija boards — and spell out your name though I’ve buried you a thousand times. More incantations: “R u here?” “I still <3 u.” “Gimme a sign.”
Not that you answer. I swallow the sting of my séance being seen-zoned.
Arshi Mortuza is a writer and educator residing in the Greater Toronto Area. She is the author of One Minute Past Midnight and Pressed Flower. Her work has been featured in numerous literary outlets worldwide.
Minor characters from my past play walk-on roles in my dreams. Precise details: the huskiness of a woman’s voice, the neatness of a long-ago boss’s moustache, cameo appearances with those closer to me in life’s hurly-burly, my regulars, intrigue me. The only part of an early story by John Updike I remember was when the narrator described the past as a vast sheet of darkness where a few random moments, pinpricks of light, briefly shine. Reading Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld’s witty modern take on Pride and Prejudice, reminds me how much art makes of misunderstood information, sexual and social tension, the giddiness of thin secrets, small things lit by hope or darkened with despair. Before mobile phones, noisily busy in an adjoining room, I once heard the staccato of a long message being left on my answering machine. When I had time to play it, optimistically expectant, to my utter horror it had vanished due to a connection fault. I never learned who believed I had received it without response. These missed instances transport me to student days and Angel’s letter under a rug in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
My serendipitous discovery of Yeats’ early poem, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, also before mobile phones, came about when, like a character in an old monochrome movie, I lifted an antimacassar on my club armchair, exposing a hidden letter. A nephew, my house-sitter during recent travels then, had a girlfriend, the letter’s addressee. Did she hear his approach, slip the letter from sight, then later forget it? Aswarm with voyeuristic conjecture, I read it, mind-chuckling about this connection to novelists’ formulae of letters found too late or never. Someone with a European name travelling by bus around northern Australia gazing on an endless panoramic heat shimmer covered a page describing this before getting to the point: his unrequited, perhaps ended, love for my nephew’s girlfriend. His heart’s slender hope bled all over the rest of the pages, awkward syntax charging its poignancy. Conscripting the young Yeats to illustrate his adoration, the poor guy reduced that effect by transcribing the gorgeous ‘Cloths’ as ‘Clothes’.
Now, my mind a maelstrom of memories, I wonder if that lovelorn swain recalls his paean to the girl he had lost to my nephew who, though no longer her partner, is still in touch with her. Do his thoughts return to the landscape between Broome and Darwin when he felt dizzy with desire for a girl who is now growing old and drinks too much? Do pangs of lost love, its accompanying dolour, linger? His added postscript: ‘No more beautiful words were ever written. Isn’t it you and me?’ followed Yeats’ poem. Perhaps with Maud Gonne on his ardent youthful mind, Yeats closed with: I have spread my dreams under your feet;/ Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. One thing that young man lonely on a bus achieved was his inadvertent introduction to me of what would become my favourite poem, so rich is its tapestry of swooning loveliness. I wish I could dance the tightrope of language with that broken-hearted scribe who heard the tyres moan, leaving all his dreams behind, as my reading life whizzed by.
Ian C Smith’s work has been published in BBC Radio 4 Sounds, Cable Street, The Dalhousie Review, Griffith Review, Honest Ulsterman, Offcourse, Stand, & Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He writes in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, and on Flinders Island.
You can find more of Ian’s work here on Ink Pantry.
When the tomorrow comes as a light at first, and in the dark the darkness burns, it explodes in flower loops your soul. Without seeing, without waiting! This autumn shares fruit scent, even though the type is pushing towards winter, the leaves fall, when the loops are ready to be born. Without seeing, without waiting! I touch this autumn, it burns my hand and the day becomes sad. When I smell I feel a spring breeze. Without seeing, without waiting!
Nikollë Loka was born in Mirdita on March 25, 1960; graduated as a teacher at Luigj Gurakuqi University of Shkodra; master’s degree in pedagogy at the University of Tirana, doctorate in history of education at the University of Tirana. Author of ten poetic volumes in Albanian and three poetic volumes in Italian (two of which with co-authors); included in the anthology “La Poesie contemporaine albanaise”, “L’Hartmattan” publications, Paris 2024. In addition to Albanian, his poems have been published in Italian, English, French, German, Arabic, Romanian, Swedish and Macedonian. Winner of several literary awards in the country and abroad. Included in the Lexicon of Albanian writers 1501-2001, editions “Faik Konica”, Pristina 2003 and in the Encyclopedia of Italian language poets, “Aletti Editore” Rome 2021.
You can find more ofNikollë’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I thought the squirrel had died inside the tree so I poked at it with a stick. It didn’t move, so I poked inside the hollow I thought it was trapped in, poked it again. Something grabbed my stick tugged it with teeth and tiny hands, and so I pulled the stick back out. Weeks later
three tiny tails snaked out of the hole next to the first squirrel’s twisted and wrapped around their mother’s tail as though they had to cling to her even out here. I never saw their little faces, never saw anything but the tails growing thicker and redder and fluffier with each day. The mother would only come out at night to gather food for them, I never saw her leave her post. I spread crackers with peanut butter for her in the kitchen carefully placing them just below her nest as an offering a plea for forgiveness.
One morning, all four tails were gone. The hollow gaped at me, abandoned, from my old birch tree. I put more crackers in the garden, put them in the branches near the hollow, chased stray cats from my yard and kept the dog inside, but I never got to see those little squirrel children never got to see who had made their first home in my yard.
The Mouse
My husband calls me into the kitchen to show me the mouse that has fallen into the sink during the night. “I think it’s dead,” he says just as it begins paddling half-heartedly in the water once more one last, futile effort to find some purchase on the slick porcelain basin one impossible final effort. Its eyes are dull, flat, black minutes from the end. I reach down into the water, pull the little creature up by its tail take it outside. “Make sure it’s dead,” calls my husband from the house
not wanting to be a part of whatever I have planned. The mouse struggles feebly in my hand. Its eyes don’t see me. I have never seen eyes like that before, half goggled, oblivious like two dull nail heads jammed into its face. I carefully set it down in the garden, place its feet on the dirt let go of its tail. “Please don’t come back,” I whisper as it struggles for life, for balance before springing off into the undergrowth.
“Please don’t come back.”
The Myth of Correspondence
To fully understand the pictures I have sent you first, fill a bathtub with water and ice get into the tub with all of your clothes on. Only then should you shake these photographs out of this careful assemblage of paper.
This is the only way you’ll be able to understand the shades of weather that separate us, the only way to separate yourself from your envelope of tropical breezes and permanent sunshine. I will speak to you through the ice bruising your skin a frigid wraith clinging to you from too far away.
Tuesday
On a perfect day, I would be able to open my back door find nothing but jungle waiting for me, sunshine filtered in through the leaves of trees I’d never seen before, the calls of unfamiliar birds coming at me from all angles. On a perfect day, I would hear snakes in the undergrowth, monsters rustling just out of sight hear the low rumble of a tiger or a jaguar breathing a warning shot close by, perhaps as close as the cooling shade beneath my back porch.
But this is not a perfect day, and I have not been transported to a random scene from a Kipling novel, have not been transported back in time to march with Herodotus or Alexander through lush jungles untouched by civil war am not looking for new species of birds with Audubon or stumbling into and through the ruins of Machu Picchu with Bingham. I am just digging holes in my own back yard for tulips and daffodils wishing I could be anyone but me.
Mouse Trap
The little mice watch me from their prison of tin and plexiglass inside the live mouse trap I baited the night before. Four little mice with pointed noses and trembling whiskers eyes black and bulging against their dark brown fur. I wonder how I must appear to them, this giant thing that they spend their days avoiding, rushing from one dark corner to another at the sound of my footsteps, and now there’s nowhere left to go, they wandered into this baited box and now I have them in my curious grasp.
I tap on the little plexiglass window and they rush to the corners of the box, cram themselves into the entrance chute, their thin black tails twitching and curling, hanging out in the open. I imagine what it would be like to keep them as pets, these stinky little mice what it would be like to train these wild mice to live in a cage to eat only when food is offered, and only what I alone offer them if eventually, they would learn to anticipate my arrival at the door of their cage with joy, or if they would always be just as terrified of me as this?
Holly Day’s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Talking River, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and the Indiana Writers Center.
You can find more of Holly’s work here on Ink Pantry.
The short woman waddled across the children’s section of the library toward the young woman cooing at a baby she had set on a blanket on the floor while a toddler screamed nonsense at her. She understood. He had to pee. Oh, I’ll watch her the short woman pointed to the baby. Are you sure? Much nodding. I’ve always wanted a baby. The boy’s shrieks garnered eyebrow raises and winces from other patrons. Much blushing. Thank you. The mother ran the toddler toward the restroom. The non-mother waited then picked the baby up and followed the mother until the exit.
Megan Wildhoodis a neurodiverse Christian writer, editor, and writing coach who grew up in the intense sun and snow of Colorado. She believes that freedom of expression is necessary for a society that is not only safe but flourishing for all. As a human who has gone through more than one phoenix-level transformations, she will spend a lifetime turning those ashes into verse, story, essay, but most of all flashlight for her readers and those she works with in her coaching practices.
that scratchy transistor still sounds the same to the ears of the past hidden under the cover of a late night wish
and you refuse to believe that the cornstalks are any shorter that the dirt is drier than it was last summer
and meanwhile the snow piles up and regardless of month you remember peering out the windshield from your backseat vantage listening to your mother swerve the wheel cussing the march and the gravel
and all of this is the same as yesterday as tomorrow when you believed the last gasp was the ending word
but now that frozen moment is less than a footnote on your approaching obsolescence or so it would seem as you sit here refusing to recognize the moment for all it is
Timeline
We were told all of this before as we reveled in the static existence that permeated the pavement, and every day meant something, except for the ones left in the background; signposts that always said: Try Again, and we did, because what else is there to do when all you’ve got is everything, but all you see is nothing?
We were told all of this before, but things like that rarely matter when today is the only day, and what has changed but a dented perspective, and you had this pocketknife, and that was enough in the hazy moment.
We were told all of this before, crunching earth that advised walk slowly, walk steady, so we ran, and one day we’ll rest.
Retrospect on the Wind
There were late night moments of ritualistic abandon, throwing everything to the fire; caution being the first to go.
We’d see the twinkling darkened windows from a vantage of impossible distance, never knowing what was on the other side of that black glass, only that it had to be something grander than the place from which we came.
Things would burn down, ashes collecting at the bottom of a rusted-out fifty-five-gallon drum, and all within a radius breathed in the noxious odour of something that never should have been.
A single struggling streetlight told the shadowy tale of every other busted out arc sodium dream, and we believed all those soundless words with an innocent fervor never to be matched.
Sometimes in the still midnight of now, you can hear a wind shoot through trees, even a lone coyote calling to the gathering, but just beneath all of that, you might hear all the things we never said.
At the Core
There’s a quiet spot deep inside of nothing, underneath everything,
hiding, waiting to be found; a centre to be exhumed, but only from within,
and that’s the trick, isn’t it?: to dig out the intention from underneath the extensions,
to explode from a position of implosion. There is a quiet spot,
and it’s there, breathing, waiting, knowing that time is irrelevant, that the wind never fails;
believing that calm will come, and it’s only to be found beyond the next breath.
how it is
to all extant you see a sideways world turning in some unimaginable cycle unpredictable and disturbing
you watch from your suspiciously rounded corner an acknowledgement of nothing a promise of everything
and yet the circles swirl the world knows and you’ll remain in the dark seeing through pinholes and pretending they’re stars
your perception an image from a coffee can camera of yesterday’s embellishment undulating and roiling and nauseous
but that’s only what happened yesterday and tomorrow is less than a dream and today’s already half in a book that’s already begun to smoulder in the wet flames of anything that ever seemed to make sense
James Benger is the author of several books of poetry and prose. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Writers Place, and on the Riverfront Readings Committee, and is the founder of the 365 Poems in 365 Days online workshop. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and children.
“We’re at our most bestial when threatened not with hatred but indifference; what our blood wants is reaction of some kind.” New Hampshire night, our own reaction, you pliant, penetrable, laid out beneath me as flies fidgeted our room, pirouetted moist air. Yet we sank beneath bestiality to do just what indifferently we wanted, beneath our glut of blood, so the summoned beasts might react with this: ripped limb from limb, buried in low-lying Virginia swamp marsh, given what aphorism is only got in extinction, darling, as I quote what you said at the bar before. In other words, they hated us. The one-night stand wouldn’t matter if your brain didn’t have the right words in it: stories, sequences, slammed-down metaphors of a singed self. Frequencies.
II.
As the world between her legs tightened around her, what she saw in bed with me was stark: okra, stamens, roots, all that in nature coalesces in erect growth; and a shadow father bent, then erect, then bent again, perverse from amassing wealth in a world whose submissiveness poisons him. Beneath the sultry, wooded surface, what I saw was a semi-frightened animal, along for an all-night ride (gruesomeness of 4 a.m. New Hampshire sun), knife thusly thrusting into the backs of everyone around her, managing to have stamina enough against constraint to take what she was taking. The mattress thumped: above, an angel was unable to conceal laughter, understanding it was all in the script, including the garish sun’s leer.
Adam Fieled is a writer based in Philadelphia. His books include Opera Bufa, Beams, Equations, Apparition Poems, and the manuscript-in-progress Something Solid. A magna cum laude Penn grad, he edits P.F.S. Post.
You can find more of Adam’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Aging brings loss, but sweetness persists Love is pressed from what endures
Life, a ripe apple— Red Delicious, rumour of hell, bittersweet to the core. If you can taste it with & chew it with false teeth. Most friends have vanished— ghosts slipping beyond shadowed, silent doors. That parlour where no returns. It’s only a rumour. Yet, I wander the garden, fields stripped of grace, grapes foot pressed into concord— faith fermenting in the barrel of hidden old gospel & songs. Kneeling in this season of loss. Lies the tartness of redemption. While others (wheeled) wield the devil’s fork in the heat of their own fires. So, squeeze what sweetness remains, press me— last sweetness. In your apple juice jar of love.
I Conceal My Craft
An armadillo symbolizes guarded creativity This poem contrasts self-protection with vulnerability
I conceal my craft beneath my shell. Mine of an armadillo, snug in its embrace, nestled near its warmth, as insects buzz under the midday sun, where stories collide with struggles, and words fester like unresolved thoughts, distant from the critics’ needle pen hearts. Their relentless demands, cold cash, and hollow praise layered thick with honey on pages between verses, where every line holds a lingering scent or memory. I gaze up at the vast sky and chuckle. Speaking in tongues nervously out of mind shining chimes waiting for the next critic to declare my thoughts don’t flow, out of character, my rhythm’s a misstep. I tally each word, joy, and sorrow. One poem, one collection of verses for me; One poem, one collection, a poetry book against me. Breathe shallow, breathe hard for the heart with age. I conceal my craft under the armour of the armadillo.
Dove Bar Poem
In this short poem relationship differences create distance and longing
An ex-lover told me she loved Dove dark chocolate bars. Dove bars were suitable for lovers. She ate dark Dove bars. I ate light Dove milk chocolate. She was healthy; I was sad. We often got into fights over this. She was manic, and I was depressive. Sex was a bouncing basketball affair. She was healthy, not knowing her disease. I was sad, stealing apples. Swiped from Farmer John’s orchard. Sleeping wherever I found a pillow. A pillow wherever found.
Tonight, Tonight
This poem embraces solace in moonlight trusting dawn’s gentle promise
Tonight, I am the moon’s envoy, bare feet awash in silver. Longing settles in me— spark or ember, I remain. Thunder soft as cat paws, storms now gentle memory. I flutter, no longer afraid, teaching darkness to move gently. Tonight, I find comfort in the moon’s borrowed light, trusting dawn will come.
Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 418-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 47 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 8 Pushcart Prize awards and 8 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 710 published poems. He is the editor-in-chief of three poetry anthologies, all of which are available on Amazon, and has authored several poetry books and chapbooks. Michael has administered and created 6 Facebook poetry groups. Member of the Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/ and Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/. His poems have been translated into several foreign languages. Awards/Contests: International Award of Excellence ‘Citta’ Del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis XI Edition 2024 Milan, Italy-Poetry. Poem, Michael Lee Johnson, “If I Were Young Again.” Please consider me for a Best of the Net or Pushcart nomination.
You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.
In the sensual, fleeting twilight of autumn, a man feels an urgent energy to connect deeply with the world and find love. He disdains artificial tourist spots, finding vitality instead in the crowded, noisy, and authentic heart of the city—its bustling markets, dusty streets, and the conspiratorial silence that allows passion to bloom.
He finds a kindred spirit in a bold, new colleague who appreciates his humour and style. Their romance becomes a pilgrimage through the urban landscape, a rebellion against societal judgement, culminating in a single, perfect night of the first snowfall. After being expelled from a hotel by a morally outraged owner, they embrace the winter night as their true sanctuary, finding a deeper freedom and connection on a silent, snow-covered lake. Their intense, seasonal love affair reaches its natural completion with the dawn, as winter firmly establishes its reign, leaving behind the permanent, gleaming memory of a passion that burned at the very edge of the season.
As Autumn, that seasoned artist, performed its final act, plucking the last of the stubborn, curled leaves from their tenuous hold and painting the mornings and evenings with the damp, grey chill of transience, a strange and familiar energy would stir within him. It was a quiet madness, a siren call that pulled him from his solitude and sent him wandering, not to escape the world, but to fall more deeply in love with its beautiful, crumbling heart. This was his season of confluence, a time to find a kindred spirit with whom to walk, their hands gently entwined, over carpets of desiccated chinar leaves, listening to the crystalline whispers of their passage. Together, they would devour the steam and spice from humble stalls, their warmth a defiance against the encroaching cold, and lose themselves in the vast, forgiving anonymity of fog-shrouded landscapes. He imagined they would be pilgrims on old buses and matadors, sitting tight, their closeness a haven as they would rattle through the city’s teeming, honking bazaars. He held no affection for distant, polished tourist attractions, those anodyne stages for borrowed wonder. Nor did he seek the seclusion of generic natural resorts, where every vista felt predictably picturesque. No, his heart was tethered to the city’s one conspiratorial attribute: its boundless, non-judgmental grace. The city never scowled upon those falling in love, upon those stealing moments of tenderness in its shadowy corners. It was a silent, knowing accomplice to the sacred, sensual world awakening within. He cherished its particular silence, not an absence of sound, but a resonant quietude found beneath the urban din, a deep, sonorous hum that seemed to stir the very core of his being, arousing a universe of sensation. He loved the press of the crowd, the democracy of huddled bodies grazing shoulders, a fleeting, intimate communion of strangers. He found poetry in the puffs of steamy breath exhaled into the crisp air, a visible sign of life’s persistent furnace, and in the raw, guttural calls of hawkers, the honest music of survival. The cacophony was his liturgy. The relentless traffic, the impatient honking, the unceasing hiss of the marketplace; all of it a roaring tribute to a world stubbornly, gloriously, and passionately alive.
The approach of winter settled in his spirit as a paradox; a tremor of disquiet intertwined with a boom of sensual energy. It unsettled him, for it bred a desperate yearning to make love, not merely in the physical sense, but to commune with another soul in the shared, desperate warmth against the coming silence. He was no hunter; the notion of hounding another for this solace was anathema to his nature. His heart sought a reciprocal grace, a silent understanding in another who appreciated his particular way of wanting this all; this layered, fragile confluence of body and spirit.
Yet, this disquiet was inseparable from a deep sensuality, for the late autumn, poised on the very verge of winter, was nature’s own most sensual season. He perceived the world as donning a final, breath-taking raiment of colour, a last, defiant flush on the cheek of the year before the pallor of sleep. And in this, he divined a universal truth: that the last moment of energy before a great silence, before a symbolic death, always carries within it a ferocious will to fight, to struggle, to be. Before the austere reign of winter could claim everything, the last, grand fire of autumn simply had to burn.
And then, as if the season itself had conspired to answer his yearning, he found her at his workplace, a soul who seemed to have been woven from the very fabric of that autumnal light. Her attention alighted first upon the quiet and elegant language of his attire, before settling with delight upon the cadence of his humour. She was bold in her spirit and held a firm conviction: that those who could not wield humour might possess a life, but had yet to discover the art of living it.
New to that place, she found herself drawn into what she would later recall as those first, ridiculously light moments, shared outside the makeshift canteen, bathed in the feeble, gilded sun of late autumn. For him, that light was a perpetual sensual delight, and in it, she appeared ethereal. He possessed that rare aura, an alchemy of wit and warmth that could hold anyone spellbound, and he knew, with a desperate, private certainty, how profoundly he needed the company of such a beautiful lady to relish the season’s poignant descent.
Slowly, inevitably, they collided, not as two strangers, but as two long-separated pieces of a single, broken case, their edges remembering a former wholeness. He believed, with every fibre of his being, that in this season of fleeting warmth, the intense romance was found not in wandering through a solitary, pleasing feeling, nor in dying in a romantic gaze from afar. It was in the sacred, tangible truth of touch: the meeting of hands, the proximity of a seated form, the shared, unique warmth that was the only true bulwark against the coming cold.
He had always maintained a quiet distance from those at his workplace who held court on morality, who spoke in hushed, grave tones of the body’s inherent dispositions as a weakness to be disciplined, a fire to be banked. He avoided their glances that passed judgment on the flirtatious behaviours of others, glances that betrayed a secret bitterness born not of virtue, but of opportunity never granted. And now, in the thrall of this autumn, he cared for their opinions not at all. For he carried within him a singular philosophy: that our mortal journey is, in its essence, a long, slow mourning of our own decline, a procession toward the inevitable end. Except, and this was the sacred exception, in the season of Autumn, and in the first, hushed couple of snowfall. In this hallowed interval, the tyranny of the clock was undone. In this season, he did not merely pass through time; he commanded it. He passed for time, and time, in a miraculous suspension, did not pass for him.
She, in her bold and luminous wisdom, named him the moutt of her heart’s desire: the vagabond, the tramp of her most seditious longings. In doing so, she did not merely accompany him; she became the living embodiment of his autumn, rendering tangible what he had always known it to be: a cathedral of passion, a sanctuary of sensuality, a hymn of love-making. A walk with her through the colonnades of chinar trees transformed the leaf-draped landscape; the crisp sound beneath their feet became a symphony, the air itself turned breathtaking, and the moment etched itself into eternity. Alone, it had been merely leaves on the ground; with her, it was a ceremony.
Together, they travelled the valley, but theirs was a pilgrimage of the authentic. His soul thrived in the bastiyan, the congested, pulsating quarters filled with the glorious noise of people simply going about their lives. He loved the narrow, dusty streets, even those that carried the pungent aroma of the city, where dogs dozed in lazy patches of sun, hawkers cried their wares, and every face bore the unmistakable signs of a life being lived. He cherished the small, the cramped, the intimate, for vast things and open spaces made him feel insignificant and restless, a solitary speck under an indifferent sky. Therefore, they chose public places for their most private devotions. A bus ride rattling through the heart of unknown villages became a shared secret. Endless walks through the alleys and streets of Srinagar, smelling equally of dirt and love, with no destination but the journey itself. Sometimes, they would venture into the open, autumn-dry fields spread like a tawny sea between two beautiful villages, particularly when the fog descended with sudden, ghostly grace in the late autumn mornings. Sometimes, a shikara ride offered its gentle rocking solace. And sometimes, the sheer, irrepressible sensual energy would drive them to walk a full, trembling circle around the Dal Lake, until, spent and breathless, they would inevitably find themselves drawn to the steam and solace of a cheap roadside stall, relishing not just the food, but the profound poetry of their shared existence.
All the wandering, all the whispered confessions and shared warmth, culminated in what he would later recall with a sigh as the most beautiful night of his life, a night that held his heart suspended on the precipice of exquisite feeling. It was the night of the first snow, the precise pivot where autumn yielded to winter, a threshold etched in ice and silence. They had chosen to consecrate this celestial turning together, sequestered in a hotel room poised to witness the predicted descent. There, they watched the snow begin its silent ministry from their window, a scene rendered bewitchingly visible by the fading house lights scattered along the gentle slope beneath them and the hazy halos of the street lamps. Each flake was a slow-motion promise, weaving a tapestry of pristine white over the grime and memory of the world. The atmosphere within grew thick with a surreal sensuality, the quiet intimacy of their watch a counterpoint to the hushed frenzy outside. They were observers of a world being forgiven, wrapped in a shared, warming silence.
This sacred hour deepened, blurring the line between dream and reality, until the moment, just before the clock could strike its symbolic midnight, when a sudden, stark knock landed upon the door. It was a sound like the crack of fate’s cold hand, shattering the fragile crystal of their seclusion. A voice, foreign and imperative, called his name from the other side, demanding that he come out.
The voice that shattered their peace was a guttural roar, coming from a man both massive and animate with a furious righteousness. He was burly, perhaps in his late forties, with a beard that flowed down to his chest like an avalanche of condemnation. He stood there like an enraged angel from the snowy outer world, who had just landed on earth and found himself incarnated as a mortal vessel of wrath. He announced himself as the owner of the hotel, and without preamble, he began to spew the putrid lexicon of a moral order he believed they had defiled, a litany of the degeneration of the place to which they all, in his eyes, tragically belonged.
“What evidence do you have to prove she is your fiancée?” he bellowed, his words a cold blade thrust into the warmth of the room. “Can we call her family to prove that?”
The threat hung in the air, more chilling than the winter outside: the police. It was at this moment, faced with the annihilation of their beautiful night and the exposure of their love to the cold, bureaucratic machinery of judgment, that a slight, defiant courage finally stirred within him.
“I am shocked,” he replied, his voice finding a steadiness that belied the tremor in his heart, “why did it take until midnight to tell me that. You could have denied me a room in the evening.”
The owner was struck silent, the simplistic logic a pinprick to the bloated balloon of his righteousness. For a moment, there was only the sound of the falling snow. Then, deflated and thus enraged anew, the man hollered again, gesturing with a large, fleshy arm towards the door, banishing them into the very night they had been cherishing.
And that expulsion became the sweetest, most triumphant part of their adventure. For they understood what the owner could not: that night transforms a place, stripping away the lifeless conformity of the day to reveal a living wilderness. Most people, cowed by the unknown, see no beauty in the darkness, believing only the garish light of day holds the meaning of life. But the night unfolds the real intrigue of existence; the whispers, the secrets, the raw, unvarnished truths that the blunt light of day simply fades into non-existence.
They found themselves shortly under a streetlamp, its glow a solitary halo in the vast, accepting darkness. Thick, chiming snow fell, slowly accumulating, painting the world in a deep and silent white. They had no cover, and they loved it. The snow had not trapped them; it had liberated them. The night beckoned, a vast conspiracy that mocked the owner’s wounded moral ego. It was the night that shielded them now, and the snow that sang their anthem.
They walked onto a bridge, their laughter a soft counterpoint to the crisp crunch of snow under their boots, a percussion of pure joy. In the middle of that span, between one bank and the other, suspended in time as they were in space, they stopped. They kissed, and held each other, as the night played on its grand, dark instrument. Even the waters of the Jhelum flowing beneath seemed to still their murmur, holding their breath to let the softer, more sacred song of the snowflakes sing louder. It seemed the very night had conspired to sculpt this moment for them, and the entire, silent universe stood as its witness. The shining, snow-covered brims of the streetlights were their congregation, the slowly sagging branches of the trees, bowing under the weight of fresh, pristine white, offered a solemn benediction. And as if summoned by the same enchantment that guided the falling flakes, a rickshaw materialised from the void of the white darkness, pulling up before them.
“Where are you going?” the driver asked, his voice a rasp woven from the fabric of the night itself.
“Take us to Dalgate,” he replied, joining her in the rickety cabin. As they journeyed through the muffled, sleeping city, he confessed to the driver their expulsion and the sudden appearance of this chariot in their hour of need. To this, the driver responded with a quiet, mythic gravity, “I am the Owl of the night,” claiming his role as a nocturnal guardian of wayward souls.
They walked the Dal Lake pavement then, as if no two lovers had ever walked there before. The snow, falling in relentless, elegant veils, might never have looked so profoundly beautiful, and they were certain no one had ever loved so freely within it. They were beyond care, beyond the fear of any further chastisement. Their world was their own.
Yet, the night had one more spectre to offer. At Gate 4, another burly, bearded man obstructed their path. But this man was different; his eyes held a pragmatic kindness, his voice the soft lilt of commerce, not condemnation. “Houseboat lodging for the night,” he offered, mentioning its English name to lend it legitimacy. They consented; their trust forged in the crucible of the night. But then he introduced a trick of circumstance, a whisper of necessary deception. “There are a few drunkards on the Gate, and they are watching us,” he said, his voice low. “I will first take the madam in my small boat. You will wait for me at the next gate. I will reach there in ten minutes.”
A new silence descended, thicker than the snow. A plan was laid, a temporary separation demanded by the harsh optics of the world. He agreed, his heart a tight drum in his chest, watching as she was guided away into the misty blackness over the water, leaving him alone once more under the patient, falling snow. He trusted him, for a while. But without her, the night began to speak in a different, older tongue, a dialect of sharpened cold, gnawing fear, and loneliness that exists at the very heart of adventure. Each second stretched into a minute, each snowflake a silent accusation. The world, so recently a conspirator in their romance, now felt vast and indifferent, and he was merely a man waiting on a frozen shore, his courage fraying at the edges.
Then, a shadow resolved upon the water; the boatman was ferrying back, as promised. And she was there, a silhouette against the dark lake, her presence a calming breath upon the storm of his thoughts. As he stepped into the small, rocking vessel, he felt the connection snap back into place. The night was no longer a void but a sanctuary once more, its language restored to one of whispered secrets and shared warmth. As the boatman prepared to turn towards the waiting houseboat, he found his voice, softened by the cold but firm with resolve. “Wait,” he said. “Before you take us to your houseboat, take us wherever you can into the lake. Let the journey take the whole night, if you don’t mind. We will pay you.” It was not an escape anymore, but a claiming. They would not be merely hidden; they would be immersed. They would make the entire, sleeping lake their chamber, and the endless, falling snow their roof.
Beneath the decorated canopy of the shikara, they huddled, a single silhouette against the immense, velvet dark. The boatman, now their silent Charon, rowed them deeper into the heart of the lake, where the world dissolved into a sublime nothingness. There was only the faint, ghostly loom of distant lights, the almost-silent sigh of the falling snow, and the rhythmic, hypnotic sound of the oars dipping into the black, placid water; a liquid whisper marking their passage into the void.
The lake itself transformed; no longer a body of water, it became the full, dark cosmos, its boundaries erased, its depth interminable. And this vastness was matched only by the sensual warmth blooming inside their own bodies, a private universe of feeling as infinite as the one that surrounded them. The scattered lights on the surrounding hills glimmered like distant constellations, sparkling jewels adorning the breathtaking aspects of the night.
Eventually, the houseboat received them, its wooden hull a capsule of warmth in the cold expanse. But the night did not end at the door; it merely changed its key, continuing its silent sonata for them outside the fogged-up windows. Inside, they held each other with a fierce tenderness, a final shedding of the world’s layers. They wanted nothing in between them; no cloth, no past, no future, no judgment, only the pure, unmediated truth of skin against skin, breath mingling with breath, in the sacred and embracing silence of the night.
The morning came with a changed face upon the earth. A severe, brilliant whiteness had erased the world they had known, silencing the intimate whispers of the night beneath a blanket of stark, unyielding light. As he watched the new sun glare off the snow, the signs of the season’s end dawned upon him with a quiet, inevitable weight.
Dr Ghulam Mohammad Khan was born and raised in Sonawari (Bandipora); an outlying town located on the wide shores of the beautiful Wullar Lake. Ghulam Mohammad believes that literature is the most original and enduring repository of human memory. He loves the inherent intricacies of language and the endless possibilities of meaning. In his writing, he mainly focuses on mini-narratives, local practices and small-scale events that could otherwise be lost forever to the oblivion of untold histories. Ghulam Mohammad considers his hometown, faith, and family to be the most important things to him. His short stories have appeared in national and international magazines like Out of Print, Kitaab, Indian Literature, Muse India, Indian Review, Inverse Journal, Mountain Ink and more. His short story collection The Cankered Rose is his forthcoming work. Presently, he teaches as an Assistant Professor at HKM Degree College Bandipora, Kashmir.
You can find more of Dr Ghulam Mohammad Khan’s work here on Ink Pantry.
