Rohinton Daruwala
Dark flowers open in the night, their petals sharper than their thorns, and the night bees gather their blood pollen in careful silence. This honey burns the skin, is not for drinking, but for the barest dab across lips, wrists and fingertips, that bring out long-dead witches that clothe themselves in flesh for a single kiss, buried tree-spirits that crack concrete and wrap root around ankle in a slow caress, and a hundred stone demons that leap from hillside graves and melt into molten chains around your waist. This honey burns the heart, is not for swallowing, but a single spoon on the tip of your tongue can summon a storm in your bloodstream and raise laughing clawing demons from the pit you always carry deep within you.
Rohinton Daruwala lives and works in Pune, India. He tweets as @wordbandar and blogs at wordbandar.wordpress.com. His first collection of poems is The Sand Libraries of Timbuktu(Speaking Tiger 2016). His work has previously appeared in Strange Horizons, New Myths, Star*Line, Liminality, Through the Gate and Silver Blade.