POETRY
Bandits of Dream City
by Sharang Biswas in Issue Nineteen, March 2025
In my dreams, we’re burglars
Our fingers ooze through castle walls of toffee and cloud
like a warmed spoon through the toffee-walnut ice-cream I churned on your birthday
Our breath steals between the gaps in a snake-streusel door
like the entire rhubarb-streusel pie you snuck into that terrifying French documentary
We dodge cardamom-bullets screaming out of paneer-dragon mouths
like the recipe my mother frothed out over the phone, too pungent for your sister
We whisper past treasures of diamond-sugar and pearl-milk
like—
like—
Your text scalds me awake,
as warm and painfully bright as bedroom sunshine
Been a while!
How’s it going?
You doing okay?
You don’t remember the heists we dreamed.
I don’t remember the taste of your kiss.
© 2025 Sharang Biswas
Sharang Biswas
Sharang Biswas is a writer, artist, and award-winning game designer based in NYC. His nonfiction writing has appeared in publications such as Eurogamer, Unwinnable, Broken Pencil, First Person Scholar, and more, while his fiction & poetry has been published by Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Augur and Baffling, and has been selected twice to appear in the annual We're Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction anthology. He is the co-editor of Honey & Hot Wax: An Anthology of Erotic Art Games and recently released Tome of Dark Delights, a collection of D&D-inspired erotica. His upcoming novella The Iron Below Remembers is due in 2025.