[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.

[dVerse] May 11th - The Bird Did Not Fly

The Bird Did Not Fly

By Tuesday morning, the cage had learned my name. It said it softly, in Ma’s voice, from the kitchen window where the caged parrot hung beside the basil. I had returned after twelve years, with a suitcase and no husband, which in our lane was worse than arriving with a corpse. Ma made tea. The parrot scraped its beak against the brass bars. “You can sleep in your old room,” she said, as if mercy had furniture. I opened the window. Outside, the night jasmine leaned in, reckless, fragrant, almost free. And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— into the room, into the cage, into my lungs. The bird did not fly when I opened the latch. Neither did I. We only looked at each other, ashamed of our training.

~ Oizys.

Word count: 131
Written for dVerse Prosery — Paul Laurence Dunbar, hosted by Dora on May 11, 2026. The prompt asked us to write a piece of prose fiction in 144 words or fewer, using the line from Dunbar’s Sympathy: “And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—” This is fiction. Mostly. The cage is innocent until proven hereditary.