Poetry
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(i will weave into this evening)
the sun has folded itself
into its own hands.
light trickles through my fingers,
warm and slipping.
i hold an orange to the dusk,
watch how the last hour of the day
stains it like an artist
pressing their thumb into paint,
smudging the edges,
softening the rind into gold.
the fruit is warm from
sitting by the window.
i press it to my lips before peeling.
the scent bursts open, thick and sweet,
as if the citrus knows how to pray.
the peel curls against itself,
a ribbon of memory,
a hand wrapping another.
orange has always been a name
for something fleeting.
the last embers of a fire
before the hush of coal.
the hush of a city before
the streetlights blink awake.
my mother’s voice as she tells me
stories of her childhood,
a language of mango-stained summers,
afternoons steeped in card games
and the clink of ice cubes in steel tumblers.
the days she spent in a house
with ceilings too high to touch
but windows flung wide enough
to let in the sky.
the moment before something disappears.
(never go to bed without kissing goodnight)
this is a love letter to the ordinary things.
the quiet insistence of morning light
through lace curtains.
the sound of a bicycle’s spinning wheel.
the hush of a tea kettle before it whistles.
a hand on the small of a back in a crowded room.
the first sip of water after a long walk.
the scent of tangerine oil on your wrist.
the shape of your hand in the dark,
reaching for mine as if pulled by instinct.
i think about how love isn’t grand,
isn’t cathedral-sized or breaking-the-world-in-half.
love is a streetlamp waiting for you to come home.
love is the silence before a soft hum.
love is someone remembering how you take your coffee,
the way you pause in an aisle to pick up my favorite biscuits,
how you always leave the last piece of fruit for me.
love is my grandmother’s hands, pressing dough into perfect rounds,
feeding us before feeding herself.
love is the way my grandfather looked at her across the dining table,
as if she had rearranged the stars just by sitting down.
love is the way you press your cheek to my shoulder when you’re half-asleep,
the way you laugh into my neck when something is too funny to keep inside.
when i was fourteen, i thought romance
lived in the electric hum of a movie score,
in grand gestures,
in the symphony of someone
calling your name in the rain.
but now, i find it in the quieter things.
the way my father waits at the door
to make sure the car engine starts before i drive away.
the way my mother tucks a note into my bag
when i travel, something small and folded,
a reminder that love is a thing you carry with you.
the way you reach for my hand absentmindedly,
like an instinct, like a second nature.
i used to think i wanted fireworks,
but now i think i just want this:
the lamp glowing in the kitchen at midnight,
the sound of laughter tangled with the wind,
the scent of oranges resting in a bowl,
waiting to be shared.
(how long does an orange hold the sun’s warmth after you bring it inside? how long does love hold onto the shape of someone, even after they leave?)
in a grocery store once,
i watched an old man pick out oranges
with careful hands.
he weighed them in his palm
like he was memorizing their weight,
running his fingers over the pores of the skin,
searching for something.
i wonder if they reminded him of someone.
if the scent of citrus
cracked open a door in his mind,
if the color pulled him back to a kitchen,
to a summer afternoon,
to a hand reaching for his in the dark.
i wonder if love lingers in objects,
if we leave pieces of ourselves
in the things we once touched.
i wonder if he bought oranges because they used to.
if he peels them the way they did,
in perfect spirals, never breaking the skin.
(my grandfather ate oranges every winter, peeling them slowly, as if they were something sacred. he said they tasted like home.)
orange is the color of things you can’t hold onto forever.
a child’s laughter as they
chase a kite down the shore.
the moment before a candle is blown out.
the last note of a song fading into silence.
the way the sky blushes
before surrendering to night.
the way love feels when it is still new,
still golden, still trembling at the edges,
afraid of the dark but unwilling to leave.
the way you look at me when you think
i’m not paying attention.
the echo of your voice in the hallway
after you’ve gone.
the press of your hand in mine,
still warm, even when you’ve pulled away.
(there are words for everything, but not for this: the shape of a goodbye pressed into the air like a fingerprint. the way love lingers in the doorway, waiting to be asked to stay.)
i think about my grandmother’s voice before bed,
the way she always told me to sleep well,
the way my mother always says take care
when i leave the house,
the way you hum when you are happy,
like a song waiting to be written.
these are ordinary things.
these are sacred things.
these are the things
i will remember when the days grow colder,
when the sky dims,
when i am left with only echoes.
love is not the sound of thunder,
it is the hush before it.
it is the waiting.
it is the knowing.
it is the promise of light returning.
(my mother tells me, never go to bed without kissing goodnight. i think she means, don’t let love go unspoken. don’t let love go unsaid.)
i peel an orange slowly,
let the juice run down my fingers,
press the scent to my skin.
i think about how love is something like this—
messy, uncontainable,
something that lingers long after it is gone.
i think about how oranges are never
as sweet as the ones you peel for me.
i think about how love, real love,
is not something you can write into words,
but i will spend the rest of my life trying anyway.
(you reach for my hand, and i let love stain my hands.)
i think of the way your voice
sounds in the morning,
the way your breath slows
as you drift to sleep.
i think of the oranges we split,
the way you always hand me the sweetest piece.
i think of us, here, now,
and i let the sun melt into my hands.
i let it stay.
Rudrangshu Sengupta is a poet in a physicist’s body, a lover with a scientist’s precision. But beyond the lab and lecture hall, Rudrangshu is a deeply feeling, sharply observant soul. His writing—cinematic, confessional, and lyrically obsessive—blurs the boundary between memory and invention.