In the Arms of Sighs

Royal Club for Literature and Peace 

In the Arms of Sighs

Sanjay Singh

In the Arms of Sighs

Miles of silence lie like a desert across my chest,

years of loneliness stand like winter trees — bare, patient, waiting.

The world has folded its map without me;

still, my eyes gather rain as if roofs remember how to leak.

No shadow walks my road — the light is a judge with no mercy,

flat and bright as the inside of an empty room.

I know no one will come into my arms;

even so, sighs rise from me like a tide that refuses reason,

pulling shells of sound toward an indifferent shore.

I will not die with someone at my side — that door stays closed —

and I have learned that pain is a private ledger:

no one signs my name, no one balances my sums.

Yet why do the nights return to me like old songs,

why do lost memories knock at the window like soft thieves?

Perhaps longing is a stubborn lamp: it refuses to go out,

teaches fingers how to cup warmth when no one else will.

If there is no bed, if the world offers only a pyre or a slab of road,

I will sleep — a small surrender, not defeat,

folding my body into the quiet as one folds a page.

Sleep, here, is a taught breath — a promise to continue,

a brief truce with the relentless day.

I carry solitude like a coat that fits oddly but keeps the cold at bay,

and in the pockets I keep a few unspent dawns.

Sanjay Singh

documentation: Waffaa Badarneh