A Summer that goes Nowhere
By Vandana Kumar
The sun kisses me
On a relentless summer afternoon
All over
Without my consent
How does one evade the omnipresent?
I don’t resist
Ghosts of algorithms
All over the place
Shadows stretch like struggling memories
Buildings taller than the tallest member
From both sides of my family
Stare at me
Like some monoliths of obscure Gods
Lying on the pavement
A picnic hamper seems incongruous
It needs its green grasses
I abandon it
Another late evening lives up to its promise
Of being without motion
Neon lights bleed
One into the other
A still season with its stillborn
A language only the broken
Can decipher
Vandana Kumar is a French teacher, translator, Indie Film Producer and multiple award-winning poet from New Delhi, India. Her poems grace over 100 websites and published anthologies. She is a Pushcart prize nominee 2023 and her poetry collection ‘Mannequin of Our Times’ has also won several awards. She was the Guest of Honor at the Global Vision Summit 2024 held in Athens, Greece and is now a cultural ambassador of the PILF 2025.