of faulting what you knew all along
to be weak, like a spine, the sag
in the bed that you have slept on
for forty years, the dulcet tone
of a mother who thinks you are
still five, nothing tears faster
than the paper no one wrote on,
or someone wept on, wishing she
could write one word that would
matter, then one more, and one
more, a gradation senseless and
cruel, like tears on a quilt of stone.

Sampurna Chattarji

Barbara Ellmerer