the force a water drop carries when it falls dead on your forehead from a fourth floor sunshade
not as the first few drops of an impending rain
but as the only one. it will not dribble
afterward. the force of impact will
scatter it. a shrapnel without
sharpness.
on the sunshade the condenser unit of a split ac.
humming as it scoops out heat from in-
side a house & dissipates it outside
as hot air & condensed drop-
lets.
snoring in the ac room is the furnace of myself.
bartering my body heat for something
more ambient. in my dream the
measured pulse of a leak.
persistent
& blunt. at the rim of the sunshade a coagulation
and the fall. drrip. drrip. drrip. how I
measured time. directly under the
sunshade in the parking lot
is a money plant.
Shriram Sivaramakrishnan is a proud alumnus of Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. His poems have recently appeared in Allegro, Coast to Coast to Coast, Bird's Thumb, Pidgeonholes, among others. His debut pamphlet, Let the Light In, was published by Ghost City Press in June 2018. He tweets at @shriiram.