Heat

By Sarah Das Gupta

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Here is a strange stillness, a breathless waiting.

          And nothing moves

In this deepest woodland, the green canopy is paralysed

the sun bores down between a wooden jigsaw of

branches, twigs, leaves, buds.

In the heavy silence, even the beetle’s scurrying,

echoes and washes in my ear.

         And nothing changes

Heat pushes through my veins,

below the wrist blue estuaries and distributaries

seem inert,

My heart leaps uncertainly

from beat, to beat.

        And nothing happens

The grass at my feet cringes

at the moment of fading to brown and yellow.

sapless, dying in the sun’s passionate indifference.

       And nothing stirs

I feel the earth hot beneath my hands,

fire locked in,

deep below.

A small stone in my palm, burns into the skin

      And no one cares