RK Biswas

 

                                                 

UNWANTED 

It’s still there. Stopped in time.

The season’s first mustard blossoms loosening

their yellow pollen. As yellow,

as the petals they came from.

The petals that set them free to ride

 air and breeze. The wind. The bees.

The flowers on their slender stems

touching your chest. Yes, you were that small then.

Above you a yellow sun sent down

concentric circles of blue. The horizon

flung its palms out wide behind the scrum

of tree tops full of nests, so far away they seemed

to belong to a Japanese garden.

There must have been white bunny clouds that day.

The picture is too happy for it not to

 have had them. And you, so thin. So frail.

Wide –eyed, covered with yellow dots,

inhaling the sharp scent of mustard leaves and earth.

 

They would never find you here.

Nobody would know.

You would grow into an enchanted

thing needing neither food nor water. Nor love.

You would have wings.

You would grow in wisdom, and diminish

in size. You would become translucent.

Your speech would change

into songs embedded in wind and rain.

Your aura would be charged, and in the dark

you would glow. Nobody would ever know

what had become of you. That you were not

dead. That you were not beyond

redemption. That you were in truth really there,

 as before. Yes. You had felt it. That day  

passing like a current through you. And it had given

you such a sense of life, of being alive,

of being the you that you believed could take over

their dreams, if you wanted to. The you to whom truth

would belong. Be yours to make of

whatever you desired of it. And in your hands

even time’s wheel would turn into clay.