the key to my home

sits on that shelf

but the door was bombed yesterday

could you sing of this home?

sing me the stories you were told?

my home?

yours

home was golden you know,

like our foreheads

it glowed in the sun,

like our teeth

the land lived you know,

it breathed

we ate together and smiled on the street

could you paint this home?

paint me the days of old?

every lamppost was ours you know,

every moon shot us with light

we drank from some clouds

and the water was sweet,

our water was bright

we laughed and yes we cried,

but we didn’t wait to be killed in the middle of the night

will you see your home?

will there be walls to hold?

there are no walls today

ground beneath dead feet

the grass is red

my bones lie on a foreign street

I lie under unknown land but you must go,

you must enter through the window,

you must see more

Swaranya Sarkar (she/her) is a first-year from Kolkata, India. Swaranya almost always writes a poem about something if it makes her cry. This was written Sunday, after the screening of Khaled Askar’s Resilient Smiles by SFP.