It was the afternoon before I lost my way on the streets
that I dreamed of the girl with a golden butterfly.
I was walking with Janacek's Sinfonietta
under my cold, burnt ribs
trying to pull the lost strings one by one.
She stood in between the shadows of all
that music could bring into a barren land.
I was lost. And lost so far that finding myself
was more difficult than before,
when love was no war.
How does one know where a night ends?
And where do all the flowers vanish from the dreams?
The golden butterfly wraps its wings around our sleep
like the songs of summer on a windy city
when everything that we lose
feels like a blister on the chest.
May be the only sun we see then
is the one that shines between our lips,
lonely, isolated like a lost island.
Oindri Sengupta is an Assistant Teacher of English at a Govt School in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. She had been published in national and international journals like The Lake (UK), Istanbul Literary Review, Chiron Review (USA), Outlook India, Plato's Caves Online, Muse India to name a few and upcoming in Poetica Review (UK). Her debut collection of poetry 'After the Fall of a Cloud', has been published by Hawakal Publishers, New Delhi (2022, February). Her poetry has also been adapted into a play named, "Another Rainbow', by Alternative Living Theatre (Kolkata).
