Poetry by Faruk Ahmed Roni

London, Waiting for Mithila

London leans on the cusp of April
Streets glistening with yesterday’s rain,
Buds trembling on the edge of bloom,
As though the city itself awaits a hand
That never quits touch,
Just lingers in the air.

I await too
For spring,
For her,
For Mithila,
Who lives like a season within me,
Neither entirely here, yet never gone.

April, the month of poetry,
The secret season as the verses hide in petals.
The month she left me,
In a blooming Regent’s Park,
Years back, under trees bursting with colour
That could not hold her.

The sky teases blue,
Sun rays spill on stone like an accidental confession,
But then
A gust,
A cloud,
A turn in the weather,
And she is gone once again.
Just like her.

Every blooming daffodil
Is a letter I never sent.
Every breeze across the Thames
Whispers her name,
Pulling me back and forth
In the same breath.

Spring is joy
Yet joy with a shadow.
Like Mithila’s smile,
Sweet but distant,
Like her steps,
Always receding as waves
As I try to reach her.

Yet she is the spring I carry
The thaw in my silence,
The inherited warmth
None can see.

Even when the sky forgets the sun,
I remember her.
My secret season,
My never-arriving April,
My Mithila.

Copyright@Faruk Ahmed Roni