By Sanskriti Arora
The morning light is blue
Stale and heavy above her sleeping form
Rain and its wetness seep into her
Hair and a sharp tug awaken her mind.
The bluest breeze scrapes her legs
Leaving icy white lines
They settle themselves into a nerve that climbs her
Uneasy, she confronts the grey sky
And the tree cracks her back.
Leaves heavy with hail and birds
Hung on the weak brown arms
Let out strangled cries,
Witnessing their world dying,
They must
Summon their companion out of her slumber.
She hurries to the mirror
The silence presses upon her neck and knees.
As she examines her chin,
Building a sagging bridge to her collar
Where is the youth I was promised
She is haggard and betrayed
The reflection shows ditch water flowing under
Her eyes grey and shallow
Fingers rubbing skin to skin, palm on leather
Nails smoothen white bumps
And erupts a drop of blood beneath the ditch
Rock, paper, scissors it is
Yelping and apologising
Her blade with the body of an hourglass
She takes it and makes the ditch wider
Red this time,
Bringing home what she lost months ago
Tsk tsk tsk tsk
Poor girl written by Mary
Grey and yellow with fear
Everything God-like has left her body
And borrowed mud from her plant
She plastered it
And hid the hair her mother tried to erode when she was twelve
If we start now the hair will come off easily,
She said as she dragged turmeric and flour
Across her face,
Weathering her to perfection
ignoring her cries
Stand still!
The soap in the bottle becomes
Red foam and wages war on her body
It stings and escapes with the water
Safely leaving the war ground
She rubs a towel
The red stays and
The red stains
She feels the butter knife skid marks on her stomach
That someone left while layering
The spread of skins upon her waist.
As the mud settles,
The worms try to enter
Her eyes but a layer of
Lava stops them from their
Death.
The glazed portrait
Twelve years old
sits on the table and
Smiles pink while
She sits in a chair, and they confront
Each other
shrivelled and budding
rotten and blossoming
A tree being eaten by mites
By their gazes
A baby plant supplying mud
The dark ditch water flows underneath her eyes
At night she stares at the dark window
And sees sure things
Dancing beasts
The younger her teases her with her perfection
She did not accept the red
She took the pink,
Snatched it from her hands.
Outside the window
One last glance at the mud on her face
It takes her days but
she continues to convince herself to leave
Leave, just leave!
To let the sun kiss her forehead.
She feels the worms become one
With the worms growing from her face
They will nurture and nourish
As everyone watches
She touches the coarse black
And wet worms dangling from
Her head as she plasters until there is nothing left to see
But the ground.
Reversing the ways of nature,
The ditch is now safe beneath the earth.
Walking around is an act of voyeurism
With the body of a woman
The eyeballs take a walk with her, on her
Stuck to her skin,
I will remove them later, breathe
Her fat and breasts that sag to reach
The bones of her thighs buried under
Layers of unkempt skin
Her bellybutton spills all her secrets
It projects onto the passer-by’s
Eyes how she ate the mud cake
As a bear devouring her prey
They frown in horror and stare
At her naked.
She had left the room to meet the ditch but
They can sniff it already
The rotten body of water that sings through her.
The maroon walls of the doctor’s room
He frowns as he detects
A rot
Then
She sits surrounded by red brick
This time in silence,
She walks the dirty red road
Descending to the tower
At the core of the asylum
Red are the whites of the clock on the tower
The hands of time darken and hide yet she hears the
Tick, tick, tick, tick
And the punches inside the cage of her chest
Thump, thump, thump, thump
Bone breaks and a red beam escapes her chest
It connects with the Moon
That is a bigger circle behind the clock in the sky
Mothering it, yet she stands alone,
Motherless in the dark.
The clouds float in silent red
Floating towards the clock
The whites of her eyes display a thin
Tired layer of red
The can in her hand squelches
Digging into her palm
It is the soap again
I should clean myself better
She screams
Piercing the clouds
She licks the blood
Sucking on her fingers
Everything must return to the
Red darkness of the womb
And she is swirling in it
The pain
Of leaving
I must bathe in the red I lived
To be pure again
By Sanskriti Arora
Comments