Empty the sea//The Fire Sermon

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

-T.S. Eliot

Amma in the garden,
Singing with the birds,
Making beauty from dirt.
I am not like her.

I am oceans of terror.
They call me
The bad daughter.
Slap. Slash. Fire.

Rub two stones to make fire, Baba says.
Rub two bodies to make the same, I say.
Get two distracted minds together.
Span different universes within our skulls.
Multitudes of black holes within our bodies.

There was a flash of a feeling

Right before the sound matched the sin.

Right before our minds stopped

When I said I only loved you in poetry

As you crawled under my skin.

I will not care.
I will not breathe.
I will not drown in the overwhelming desire to do so.
Minds troubled with emptiness look for each other.
Everything except you in my head.
Everything except that on my body.
We're watching stars collide.
Here on this holy ground.
Are you still breathing?
Are you still bleeding?
Are you still feeling?

Baba once told me
That I was a white lily on fire.
I could set the world aflame
And not give a damn.
You wouldn't dare
Want to know how
Furious I can get.

But what am I when
This anger leaves me?
Bloody and beaten and crying.
Grief setting in the
Promises of loneliness.
How in hell can a lily be
Driven to burn down a city?
How much hurt can I take
Before I become it?

But I thank my body every day,
That it is only the eyes that fill with tears.
If my lungs could scream, if my heart could cry,
The insides of my body would drown in a second.

 (In response to Aditi Rao's A Fear of Particular Men)