Sandeep Kumar Mishra is an artist, an author, a teacher and an editor. His work has been shortlisted for ‘Wells Story Prize-2024’, ‘Page Turner Award-2024’, ‘Pencraft Book Award-2024’, ‘Westerwood Story Award-2024, ‘Plough Prize-24′, Fish Prize-24′, “The Next Generation Story Award-24”,  “2023 Commonwealth Story Prize,” “2021 International Book Awards,” and “52nd New Millennium Award-2021,”MPT Story Award-2022’ and ‘Newcastle Story Award-2022” and “Anasi Story Award-2022” and “Independent Press Award-2022” and “IAN Book Award 2022”. More information – https://www.sandeepkumarmishra.com/

---

Self-Portrait as a Truth

Always, there is the being, and the not-seeing,
Two shadows tangled, caught on a branch of thought,
A shade shared by the teeth of memory, sharp
Gnashing, as if a hunger you can’t quite feed—
the ache that wraps around the bones of days.

Never mind the loose, mindless grip of forms,
A scatter of leaves in late autumn’s grasp,
How they live, survive, and meet—
As the body meets itself, bound
In volumes of what was and wasn’t.

What is a life if not a seam
Stitched into the fabric of time?
Or a song, half-whispered, unraveled in steps
That tiptoe along the precipice of the unsaid?

In my bones, this truth is trapped,
Its weight both ballast and burden—
I long for its release, but it crouches, poised,
Waiting like a wild thing, patient on all fours.

My truth is slippery and sure,
Boundless as it bends beneath the light,
Or wears the stones with an endless, unseen hand,
A soft hunger—small as a world, large as loneliness—
For what I lose, somehow I find.

Inside this poem, truth prowls through
Lines that wind and press like threads,
With intent unspoken, insidious,
Trailing the echo of each word, a map of meaning.

For what name can I give to all I do not know?
Once, I was a boy, who thought to name all things,
And now, a man with no names left—
No language for the pulse of what I need.

The yellow fog of longing, rising like smoke
Upon the panes of memory, rubs soft,
Dips its tongue into each darkened corner,
Waits in pools by the drain, patient, aching.

The heart breaks to carry an appetite larger than joy,
An emptiness filled by what is felt, unseen,
Each fragment meeting the next,
For whatever we have lost is still ourselves we find—
Always, again— beneath, beyond, beside.

---

Song of Myself as a Moon

I’m still adjusting to time’s permanent pull.
I’ve mapped shortcuts to fields where I first took form,
when meadow, grove, and stream would gleam,
draped in light, a dream undimmed.

Then I was housed in a nest—
a cradle clinging though worn, frayed thin.
Not just trauma, but birth and blaze—
this nest of becoming, this fire, this life.

Then, each dawn wore glory, fresh as breath.
But now, the ache of that absence stays.
When sorrow grips me, I mistake my head as Moon,
I collect branches fallen, moss like a quilt,
mud, thick with the care of survival.

Life is a feast of flavors gathered—
saffron and rain, sea-salt and chive.
Night taught me to savor days by depth,
to burn like the sun, fierce and finite.

Each wrinkle earned is a fold on a map without end.
I see myself as the moon—shadowed, distant,
my dark thoughts drift 384,400 km away.
In my words are gardens, in my prayers, wild fields,
and in my gaze, a lighthouse glow, unseen.

No one else can know this vision,
this moonlight belongs to me alone.
Now I write poems and take life by storm in soft beams,
petals, flowers edging roadsides where I once fallen.

---

The Poet and the Spark

The poet stands, ink pooling on fingers,
Reaching out, yet bound by lines unseen,
Shaping words, a silent alchemy,
Pulling from depths unnamed, unmarked by light.
Each verse a pulse, born of endless grasping—
Words drift up like smoke, hard to contain.
They slip through fingers, unshaped, unrefined,
Yet in their haze, a strange form takes root.

To write is to court the unknown, to sit
In the dark hum of half-born whispers,
Where shadows echo dreams not yet dreamt,
And language bends, then buckles, then gives way.
Who, then, is the maker—creator, created?
Does the verse command the hand, or the hand the verse?
The line emerges, jagged, disobedient,
An experiment, a question with no answer.

The poet watches as the verse stirs—
An entity, untamed, alive, almost real,
Turning back to gaze upon its maker,
Its impact a whisper in a crowded room,
Yet it breathes in the quiet, cracks open minds.
A city’s voice found in a line’s break,
A silent chorus where the margins end—
Lands are reshaped within the boundaries of a page.

Forms fall away, as rigid frames dissolve,
Making space for a freedom only ink knows,
Where rhyme is mere echo, left behind,
And the verse is free to leap, pause, or drift.
How strange, this craft of endless refining,
Each line a compass pointing both ways,
As if the words themselves were alive,
Seeking their own meaning, outside the poet’s will.

In this quiet forging, society finds itself—
An unseen balm, a needle threading souls,
Re-imagined, re-formed, yet strangely familiar.
The poet, lost, is found again in words,
A creator with creations casting shadows,
Who feels less maker and more made,
Held aloft by the verses that still echo,
Their silent impact etching lines upon the soul.