Cremating the Letters

Dear, happiness, religion
burn, parents, tomorrow - were
the words most repeated.
Rounded, ballpoint-edged and blue -
a wedged sky between clouds.

There were other words too:
incense-touched, march-twig, bird-feet,
bent-finger, but I couldn�t tell
if they were her own
or well-meaningly borrowed.

I kept the letters in a cookie tin and hoped
at least the one where she wrote �Love�
seven hundred times before finally
coming to terms with �Death� written only once -
will defy the laws of loss.

Through filtered light I saw
dust and dry skin settling like little prisms. Once
those letters were the only vital signs
my heart
hadn�t stopped from habit.

I climbed the chest,
dragged them to the floor.
Stripped them, letters from their cold
slit-throat covers. Raked
them in a heap and lit the fire.

Fire blazing luminous yellow,
sometimes red or blue on the fringes
and finally black in the dead center:
not soot but perforated memory.
It was a big fire.

Balled a fist, broad headed and winged
cicadas - also her word, perhaps
borrowed because you don�t get them here.
The hot hymn still raging:
it promised to die.

But how? Why? I can�t tell
even after the firemen are gone.
Because I have seen
burnt words shine
through dark rings
and burnt skin healing well
within blisters.

After a Visit to Niagara Falls

After the falls visit the butterfly conservatory.
I know you will like the moths, lacking
in colour and panache. Moths. They
aren�t scared to splay their wings.

When I seduced one to a waltz
four sugar-seeking slant legs working
on my finger to exhaustion
were sorely disappointed but

didn�t show, tell or fly away. No.
Beyond extraordinary longings,
ambitious for smaller things,
she meant to stay. And when I saw

the fibroid wings on her antennae
I curled like scooped ice-cream
trying to feel if perhaps there were
wings in me I didn�t know.

O! How miserable the fall would be
but for the visit to the butterfly
conservatory where I found a moth -
�Don�t touch� displayed in bold-black

didn�t make sense - I touched
them. Moths! So what
if that meant they would die.
That had to be a lie.

No one can die from touching.

                                                                                                © Sabyasachi Nag

Loch Raven Review Winter 2005 — Vol. I, No. 2
← Contents Page     |     Cover Page     |     Home     |     Contributor Notes →