Nothing is Missing
Arranged beauty, a vanishing self. Silent guns in the corner reveal an…
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From Matchbox
Matchbox – May ’26
Dolls of the Desert
Lavender light reveals daily decay: war's distant echo, body's stains, smiling gods buried.
May 28, 2026
Every day, the windows fill with lavender light—
I bite my lips, then rinse my face, brush my teeth,
pick at my skin even though I know better,
I spend my whole day
eating junk food, watching
YouTube videos of war in the desert.
slowly, the day sinks into the mirror of my bedroom,
all soldiers become dolls,
killing each other with painted, polished hands,
I keep to myself, scream into a pillow—
my body is covered in post-period spotting,
I start looking
for wads of toilet paper, something to erase it,
but see a landfill of stained cotton flowers
stacked like smiling gods waiting to be buried alive.
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PART OF A COLLECTIONThe Night, a Naked Knife and 4 other poems
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Ashwani Kumar
Ashwani Kumar is a poet, author and academic in Mumbai. Widely published, anthologised and translated into several Indian languages, his poetry volumes include ‘My Grandfather’s Imaginary Typewriter’, ‘Banaras and the Other’ and ‘Architecture of Alphabets’. Recently, he has published “Rivers Going Home” (Red River)- a major anthology of Indian poetry. He is author of the acclaimed non-fiction ‘Community Warriors” (Anthem Press), and one of the chief editors of ‘Global Civil Society’ at London School of Economics. He is also cofounder of Indian Novels Collective, an initiative to popularise translation of classic novels of Indian languages. In leisure, he writes a book column in the Financial Express.