Bio
Sambhu R is a bilingual poet and academic from Kayamkulam, Kerala whose self-conscious encounters with poetry flared into a fully-fledged love affair in his early twenties. He is currently working as Assistant Professor of English at N.S.S. College, Pandalam. His poems in English have appeared in Wild Court, Bombay Literary Journal, Muse India, Borderless Journal, Setu, and The Chakkar, among others.
Sambhu Ramachandran
Misery
Consider the misery of the shoe whose pair is lost.
The foot that filled it with a sense of purpose
suddenly turns deserter, the directions collapse
their surprises into a tryst with stillness. Through
long months of waiting, it takes up odd jobs: arranging
safe landings for dust parachuting down sunbeams
or sheltering baby spiders. Worn out by the weather,
it longs for the cobbler's needle to stitch its disuse
into a final pact with the road, the lengthening shadow
of unfinished journeys yielding under its glued-up sole.
Soon, the shoe buries itself in the ground,
the lace of regret threading its eyelets through.
Such is love: that part of us we have lost,
we await its return, firm footprints leading back to us
through time, our incompleteness growing a little less
incomplete, our hearts equipped for travelling within.