Rakesh Khandelwal

The rasa of nearness and its long shadow. Not only the meeting, also the waiting that precedes it, the doorway watched all evening, the way a room rearranges itself around one absent person.

6 compositions

The rasa of grief kept in good order. Not wailing, the quieter labour after: setting the cup back on its shelf, folding what will not be worn again, learning the exact weight of a name.

4 compositions

The rasa of the widened eye. Scale undoes us gently here: the world proves larger than the sentence built for it, and the poem's finest achievement is to stay astonished.

1 composition

The rasa that arrives after the others have spoken. Not emptiness but settlement, the water clear because it has stopped being stirred, wanting nothing further from the hour.

1 composition