One evening, with my brows angled and waiting
for the light’s permission, engine idling,
fingers drumming, I saw it happen.

Some, because perhaps they were already in the know,
were not at all surprised to see it billowing in. But I
was dismayed to see the shades disappearing
peel by peel, as if licked clean by an acid tongue,
revealing the gray underbelly of things. I sat dazed
as the traffic zipped past in fluorescent colours fast fading.

Three frolicsome girls and their navels stared back,
their mirth and energy petrified between
a tall house’s midriff and the bared teeth
of a street light that changed into venomous green.
A furry gray night unfolded, leaving me flurried
as the City hurried forward before the greys could form ranks.

It happened, nevertheless. And gray by pallid gray
filed past us like shadows on a celluloid screen.
Past our lives tacked on to a single haze-toned horizon,
with our dreams dripping down
from Technicolor to black to white
into pools and pools of timid gray.
Herding us towards a night that slowly
Asphyxiated on its long bobbing neck.

Rumjhum Biswas has been writing poetry almost since she learned to read and write. It was her way of getting back at the world. Now a sedate mom of two and wife of one she continues to write poetry and also fiction, because while poets remain poor some fiction writers do get rich and that gives her hope. Her cyber den is at http://rumjhumkbiswas.wordpress.com/. She also gets to blather once a month at (Rumjhum’s Ruminations) Flash Fiction Chronicles