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
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