Having Received Door-to-Door Blackout Orders

Written during the May 2025 India–Pakistan conflict

“Draw the curtains
Kill the lights
A curfew’s on
Blackout all sights.”

As if darkness wasn’t already
the landscape of our childhoods?
Endless hours of load shedding,
homework by candlelight,
sleep sliced thin
as fans stood still
in the Monsoon heat.

And every Ramzan,
air raid sirens wailed twice a day
to tell us it was time to eat —
sirens meant for
another century,
another empire,
another war
that never truly left.

So when they came
with curfews and blackouts,
I only wondered
what kind of place
you’d have to be raised in
to see this as the beginning
of something terrible?