1.
An unusual hourglass is my clock.
Within its unbreakable glass
Drops a grain of sand —
A lone grain of sand! —
Down its pinched waist,
Every day!
Is this the hourglass —
This artifice of timewarp —
That Death¹ raps and bedevils his fingers on,
Grinning evilly?

2.
Lately,
These 25-foot-high cinder block walls
Have been petrifying
My facial muscles.
Is that why
I am unable to pull up a smile
As effortlessly as in my infancy?
Has all this concrete
Cast a satanic spell
On me, on us?
Now,
I embody
Those isolated for too long!
I am catching on —
My half a decade is turning the corner! Then one evening,
I chance upon Caitlyne Gonzales’² voice breaking through these walls,
Drifting on radio waves —
Her teary, tremulous testimony —
Un-petrifies me!
The anti-spell!
The moment Grief surrenders
To her nerves of steel,
I attune to her
Flowering promise.

3.
Like a relief sculpture,
I sink against the wall.
And as, once upon a time,
Akhenaten and Nefertiti
Breathed the Life
Showered down to their nostrils
By Aten,³
I do too —
Not a king,
But an outcast of outcasts.
O thousand-rayed Sun,
Fountain of all nourishment,
Am I your offspring
That you burn through these smoky clouds
To nourish me with your tenderness?
“Just so,”⁴ the Sun shines down on me. “Just so.”

4.
The oasis of salvation
Falters and wavers,
Appears and disappears,
Like a mirage in a scorching desert.
A nomad,
Lurching through the forever-shifting
Scorpion-ridden sands,
I am.

Notes:

1. Death: See Hans Holbein’s depictions in “Dance of Death,” a collection of woodblock prints created from 1523 to 1525 and first published as a volume in 1538.
2. Caitlyne Gonzales: 10-year-old Uvalde school shooting survivor who went on to advocate for gun control measures.
3. Aten: The ancient Egyptian sun-god (as depicted, for example, in a limestone house shrine of Akhenaten and Nefertiti with three of their daughters, held by Germany’s Staatliche Museen zu Berlin).
4. “Just so“: Echoes the words uttered by Surya, the Hindu sun-god, as quoted in John D. Smith’s abridged translation of the epic poem “The Mahābhārata,” when his son, Karna, relates a dream he had, in which the sun-god himself had entered to prevent this son’s untimely death.