The hammered lover’s discourse in afterlife

Satya Dash

 

My séance with you hasn’t yielded any results. I only saw a faint wraith of your marmalade face. Those eyes, that mouth caressing the air in smoky lace. When I asked of you a love that doesn’t sing but hum, you stayed gorgeously silent then vanished with a chortle. Look I know this is on me: I forfeited my brain months ago. But what use is carrying a crown etched with mortality now? In the transformational nature of reality I figured I must let my brain gallivant through its swooning tides. The benefit was that I finally got to step out of my body’s perimeter ending years of doubt. That my body is the only place I could reside in. Of course this wasn’t the way I intended to kiss freedom. But the control of urges, their entry, their exits are best left to the watchmen of the Lord’s apartment. I’m aware it’s been a long night and you must be sipping a martini at some saturnine bar having exchanged a tender hello with the bartender in an apollonian shirt. But all I want to say is when you curl that olive into the roundness of your blessed mouth, I‘ll be there waiting at our doorstep: threadbare white flag with red seams showing— witness to the spectacle of your whispering harvest. You should know my tongue first learnt to whisper under your serrated breath. The mouth shall swish again what the brain cannot fathom. Oh you’ll see.

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Satya Dash’s poems have been published or are forthcoming in Wildness, Redivider, Lunch Ticket, Passages North, The Florida Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Cortland Review, Prelude amongst others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. His work has been twice nominated for the Orison Anthology. He spent his early years in Odisha, India and now lives in Bangalore. He tweets at : @satya043