I see
Autumn aesthetics,
Warm- brown sweaters,
And coffee mugs
Scattered all over the internet
In a desperate attempt to romanticize autumn.
Autumn,
A season that will leave soon.

There is no time
For aesthetics in my life today.
We don’t have autumn here-
Just a perennial gust of saturated wind.

Saturated,
With the heat
Deflected by tin roofs.

Tin roofs,
In the overcrowded slums
Near my locality
Where children play barefoot.

Children,
To whom the sky
Is the blue tarpaulin
they cover their houses with
When rain comes.

Rain,
The unwelcome guest
That comes and takes with it
A handful of lives,
A handful of cattle,
And the last essence of poetic value
Poets sought from it.

Poetic value,
Which my country has no time for,
As it whizzes past me
To save its seat
On the map of the world.
The world,
Which is busy romanticizing
Black fumes,
Into a blanket of macabre mystery
And the blood that taints its streams,
Into magenta coloured sacrifice.

The world,
Which, like all of us,
Is busy trying to romanticize its misery
Before it melts into nothingness.

Nothingness,
Which maybe,
Is all that we’re destined for.

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