In My Daughter’s Eyes

The first pictures are out
Faraway stars, bubbling and shimmering
At the edge of this elastic universe.
It has taken me a day
To grind them
Into fine powder
And sprinkle it on the bed.
I once knew a woman
Whose body was this simmering constellation.
Now we sit in rooms
Where one window
Opens up to another
To listen to the splashes in the sky
No one knows how old.
On certain days
I envy the man
Who went jaywalking in space
Fighting the temptation
To snap the cable
And be in suspension forever.
But the pictures have arrived
And my fingertips
No longer carry the traces of dead stars.
Some of them
I’ve already seen in my daughter’s eyes.

Sayan Aich Bhowmik is currently Assistant Professor, Department of English, Shirakole College and is the author of I Will Come With a Lighthouse published by Hawakal Publishers, New Delhi.

Featured image: The ghostly remains of a star gone supernova. Credit: gsfc/Flickr, CC BY 2.0