[dVerse] May 12th - A Room that Misremembers its Windows

A Room that Misremembers its Windows

In the stitched room,
the window does not promise escape.

The window is not open.
The window is performing openness.

It offers a square of green
held in place by patient lines.

Outside, perhaps, there is weather.
Inside, mother's old cloth has taken over
the duties of wall, curtain, garden, memory.

Behind its green ribs,
a pot of flowers rehearses spring
in a room that has never trusted weather.

The flowers keep their colour
without asking the sun’s permission.

Two red leaves have fallen
where nobody invited autumn in.

A red leaf comes and rests near the threshold
like a thought someone dropped
and did not return for.

I stand before this room
and think of all the places
that were called safe
because they had doors.

This is how houses confess:
not by speaking,
but by loosening a seam,
staining a corner,
letting one curtain sag
after years of being looked through.

A seam is not a wound, exactly.
It is the record
of two torn edges
agreeing, for now,
to remain together.

I touch the wall.
It gives slightly.

It does not fall.
It does not forgive.

Never collapses.
Never surrenders.

Only the smallest admission
that even brick grows tired
of being called shelter.

~ Oizys.

Written for dVerse Poetics Tuesday: What art says, hosted by paeansunplugged on Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. The prompt asked us to write a poem inspired by one of the shared artworks by Indian artists, letting the art speak without further explanation. I chose:

“A Room that Breathed in Stitches” by Sabiha Dohadwala.