Flood

This is how the river visits you
Not like a long-lost lover, but like a coy bride
Tentative and silent and determined
It coils around you like a frozen snake
As you wake up and find your feet under water
Like a coy bride, the river bares its heart
Filled with green slime, rotten leaves and dead
Hyacinth roots, tiny tadpoles and taste of the red earth
You are a virgin bridegroom, entranced and fascinated
You remain a virgin bridegroom, entranced, as the river
Takes over your house, like a coy bride, one item
At a time, your bed and your study table, your books,
Which are easiest to dissolve, your fountain pen, which is now
Its colour, your shirts, your gas stove, your cooking pots, and you
Limb by limb, with slime and grime, limb by limb, the river takes you…

This is how the river departs
Not like a coy bride, but like a long-lost lover
Heartbroken and furious and vindictive
The river, its purpose done, recoils from you
Like a drunk patron in the red light district after
Premature ejaculation, leaving on you traces of
The violent fervour, green slime and grime and
Rotten leaves and tiny tadpoles and dead hyacinth roots
You remain rooted inside your house, like a jilted lover
You cannot touch the river, its coils like a frozen snake
Its shimmering presence vanish like a love song half forgotten
What remains is the red earth that sticks to your brown skin
Like manifestation of a venereal disease, your shame
Around the torn pages under the muck, next to the pen without a nib
And cooking pots and discoloured clothes marking your territory…

(C) Dibyajyoti Sarma