POETRY

An Island of Empathy

To be a lighthouse in an endless twilight

Original Illustration by Author ( Arundhati Thakur )

you — a refugee of whatever plagued harmony
assembling your ruins as you crumble,
devoid of a stable ground and the comfort of company,
crashed and wrecked a thousand times before,
finally washed ashore, take this body whole
dust the decaying debris off your skin and
cling to my flesh as this ethical crisis clings to me —
like an infant’s mouth to the mother’s breast

and i — a godless fuck
lending my hands bare instead of joining them,
clutching on to the very last iota of empathy,
an island of two hundred and six beams
to sustain the weight of the inevitable wreckage you foster,
for i too had been a shipwreck with no lighthouse in sight
and i know of the heavy hopelessness
that comes with an endless twilight.

© Arundhati Thakur 2021