MOHIT MITRA Poet Rhyme

The Hint

An Exchange Without Record


The room had practised silence long before
We entered it. Rain thinned itself to thread
Along the glass; the radiator bore
Its breath like iron learning how to shed


A memory of heat. You smiled. I felt
The timing miss by less than one could name—
The way a step, once taken, must be held
Mid-air, then yielded back to weight again.


Between us, air revised itself—its tone,
Its temper—cooling where our shadows met.
Our hands obeyed the grammar of the known,
Then paused, as though the rule were incomplete.


I pressed. Not asking—testing, as one tests
Warm wax that waits for judgement to be cast:
Will shape consent? Will meaning bear the stress
Of touch, and not collapse when touched—too fast?


You felt it where the body turns aside
From language—there, before the mind arrives.
Your gaze adjusted, then remained, as if
Something had shifted weight and chosen not
    to fall.
The room went on. A floorboard kept our sound.
Light slipped a fraction on the distant wall.
The quiet altered shape without a wound
And did not trouble itself to call.


Later, my phone
Lay face-down, dark with trust. I sent a line
Exact enough to break if held too long—
A sentence shaped to fail if over-read.


Read this with care. Then let it disappear.


Outside, a signal changed. A door released
Its pressure. Somewhere, steps forgot their haste.
My breath miscounted—then corrected course,
A human error, briefly left in place.


The letter worked—not in what it confessed,
But in what cooled, then could not be retrieved.
The wax set. What was sealed was not preserved.


Next day, you met my eyes—no more than this:
A held delay. No promise. No retreat.


The world continued—accurate, unchanged.
We live, it seems, by what we let remain
Unprovable—
     and do not touch again.

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