Rucha Virmani

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She looks at her daughter sleeping on her lap
and smiles, her heart a hollow cave aching

with love. Outside, a fog settles in, reducing
the naked birch to the silhouette of a life once

lived, its invisible leaves rustling — the elegiac
echoes of a lost lullaby. Ravens sit still on branches, 

waiting for erasure, and the air ripens with the scent
of life turning to something else. The heat ruptures

the skin that had sewn them together. A fig falls
and bursts. — She lets her hands land on her empty

lap, while the wind traces the blurred body
of a daughter that has outgrown her mother’s arms.

Note: ‘…the air ripens with the scent | of life turning into something else’ is based on the last line of Aria Aber’s poem ‘Waiting for Your Call’

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Rucha Virmani is the founder of The Climatopia Project (Twitter: @TheClimatopia) that aims to use the power of creative writing for climate activism. She has been published by The Teenager Today and longlisted by Young Poets Network. Her work is forthcoming in The White Cresset Arts Journal. She was selected to participate in Ellipsis Writing’s Summer 2022 workshops.