psyche with a sad ending

I.

take the telemetric constant of antipodal opposition or star–crossed binaries in their death dance of decaying orbits–– paused on the pathway to mutually assured destruction.

take you and me: diametrically tethered matched footsteps in a stilted dance: north to northwest          south to southeast magnets set alike to like, tied taut with string magnets set alike to not, held fast with steel––

         ––unpredictable attractions: safety in stasis.

(still severed into hemispheres, poles apart. still bound by gravity, and string and steel.)

II.

(cut the tether, set them loose: death–dance to the hangman’s noose.)

fate is two–coined; fate has three faces cold death, consummate attraction         ––momentary stasis

this is the spiral, the snap of steel regression–decay on a two–arc wheel.

III.

the paradox is in the parentheses–– the balance tips, the paradigm shifts––         the parameters crumble.

this is the perspective plane, the conditional to the theorem. this is where antipodes unite        and stars collide, and

Iridescence: gold and bottle–blue and beetle–green. Wings snapped off mayflies in summer snowfall. The colour of frost in the early dawn. This is deception: dizzying and fractal and remorseless. These are the marks of false gods, their poisonous playthings, their breath to still the morn.

This is the stuff of dreams.

Greyscale: the gush of smoke slipping through trembling fingers. The heat of dark, long after the fires are extinguished. The sound of silence, beating hearts and bated breath. This is mourning: hollowed and ragged and bitter–rich. These are the marks of the people, their fragile existences on a hostile earth. 

Matchstick graveyards in the carcass of my candle: lost soldiers for every flame kindling the wick, for there is a cost in burning so brightly. 

PART ONE: ORIGINS

Chai in the morning. Assam and cardamom, mother’s tea. 

Sunrise heat. The smell of terracotta soil in our nostrils. 

The khat–khat–khat of cotton on a chakra, snick–snack of threads on a loom.

Calico, a thousand shades of cream.

Whittle on a banyan branch. Curls of woodskin on leather fingers. 

puff–puff – father’s breath clouds the dust, settles it bright on tamarind skin.

Lotuses on a wooden block, nailed sharp with iron.

Red pressed like Kali’s tongue. 

Teak hands stained blue. Henna tips turned black; paradoxical frostbite.

Indian ink, saffron, pink. Indigo sheets drawn skyward, billowing in the breeze. 

Murals from Kerala to Kanyakumari. Parted seas in peacock green. 

A thousand colours ripening in the sun. 

Ships squatting on the horizon. 

PART TWO: MARAUDERS 

British calico. Finespun, colony grown calico. stolen Earned calico. 

Ladies’ dresses, starched and press-ed. Wash of white lace on calico. 

Tiny roses on calico. Machine print, Parisienne calico.

Villager sari to a rich man’s robes – calico.

Crushed and crumpled calico.

Murals swept clean with white sophistication. Paper skin on rough hands. 

Indigo waters bleached demure. Lavender.

She did not die on her birthday, though the last she had was a fleeting memory of uncomfortable happiness under a cold and grey sky. No, she died one-hundred-and-eighty-three days later, on a day of little significance to those who buried her, with a bouquet of summer wildflowers. 

If she were there to have witnessed it, perhaps she would have been satisfied that the wheel had come full circle, if only by her half measures. 

If she were there to have witnessed it, she would have been appalled at how wan and wintered she looked, how the summer season did not at all suit her skin. 

But – (there’s always a but: we find solace in exception) – despite it all ––

if we were forgotten to history,

If the oceans could have washed you from my hair would they not have done so by now?

the impermanent contentments

     you bring.

you knock the breath out of me