How Civilizations Whisper by Shivani Kumari

There are cathedrals without gods inside them,

Only dust turning slowly through pale afternoon light.

People still enter with lowered voices,

Still remove their hats as if silence were sacred.

I understand them.

The world becomes unbearable when nothing watches back.

So we invent meaning in careful ceremonies:

Candles beside hospital beds,

Names carved into stone after the flood,

Flowers left where no one remains to receive them.

The scholars call it instinct.

The grieving call it survival.

Beneath the city, the trains continue like buried thoughts,

Dragging their iron grief through tunnels without daylight.

Above them, the billboards glow with artificial weather,

Promising permanence to anyone willing to look up.

Sometimes I think civilization is only a performance–

A trembling voice pretending not to tremble.

Even the stars feel distant in this century,

Like witnesses refusing to testify.

Still, somewhere beyond the sirens and exhausted buildings,

A piano leaks through an open apartment window at midnight.

The melody disappears almost immediately,

But for a moment the darkness seems less certain of itself.