Middle-Aged Parents

Faiz Ahmad

At about this age, their hearts were halved like
an elephant's divided eyes of which one was

ancestral and bereaving, while the other was
learning to be wise enough to understand that

sons and daughters are discrete points in a
dilating map, and so it was just the two in their

dense house, middle-aged husband and wife
who contemplate each other's wilting faces in

the dark, watch the sharp edged tears trickle
down violently as a poacher's weapons carving

deep wrinkles underneath their wide open eyes -
no longer startled, no longer ambushed.

---

Faiz Ahmad is a recent graduate in Biological Sciences from IIT Madras. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry Daily, Denver Quarterly, Salamander, Storm Cellar and others.

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