Some women remind me of cities, and like cities each has a unique character

As the keynote speaker begins talkin about a risk management framework for AI ecosystems,

Driving down Highway 1 along the California Coast Where beat poets came to commune with nature.

The trident lightning arrestor looks more constant than before— besieged by discomfort, bygone joys and pain—a belief flowing endlessly into the future.

In Kolkata, heat arrived as silence, thick, smothering. The days clung to us, draped like wet cloth, the evenings stitched with the hum of cicadas, their voices dense, layered, as if holding the weight of something breaking.

If you visit my mother’s village there is nothing much to see. There is a banyan older than my great-grandfather’s thoughts, a few houses older than a few cities, a temple older than my mother and boundless rice fields larger than the dreams of the farmers there.

I'm perched on a branch of my heart, like a question. Letters summon me— Why now, this flux of families And a city of the sun Beneath?

The woman I don’t recognize is back in my bed. She quotes Tolstoy.

I bought her products called Ocean Wind, a line of all blue shower gel, shampoo and conditioner

She hadn't met a man Who could easily Lift her off her feet, Make her float in mid-air Above the trees,

Nothing wakens faster than a drowsy dog sussing, through an open window, the stabbing screams of an animal,

The closer I peered at the photo, the more the images retreated. A glimpse into the past, like a black-and-white retro montage.

I used to walk home from school before they had to build the bigger school because life then was brimming with children and everything was a Cat Stevens song

The rain won't stop seems to have gone on all my life

“What is a bishti?” I wondered, eyelids heavy, drifting on the waves of an incomprehensible battle as my mom perched on the side of my bed reading “Gunga Din” from a worn copy of Kipling.

Greyness of monochrome realism in my world reigned, both inside and outside. A pale-cheeked man grabbed several frozen-white plastic bags of over-masticated-bubblegum-pink chicken from the freezer behind the counter.

The crab approaches the drenched body of the albatross warily, as if familiar with this species, as if suspicious of death.

Meet Gary, a middle aged, working class man who’s down on his luck. He’s been fired from several jobs recently

Grab the urn with her ashes that’s been sitting on your mantel for nine long days. Pour out half a cup. Mix with the broth for her Whatever Ails You soup...

I was at the West Fourth Street platform when the scent reached me before her, even before the D train hummed through the tunnels