By Anwesha Saikia
Every December, there is this fleeting desire within me –
Oh, to be forgotten by all while I still exist,
While I scan through the intricacies of a person I can’t be,
As I carry the identity of being a certain someone already.
And that maybe, when I die in real life,
All the neural networks of my existence waning to dust –
A truth that undoes itself to zero.
The body decaying at turtle pace… but where does it all go?
Bacteria eating away a fear of mine that my amygdala
Crafted with caution. Do bacteria replay
Memories of our love and shame? Wishing for it is as naive
As hoping to dream of poultry’s visions after we’ve eaten it.
But these damn bacteria won’t even eat inorganic ash.
I have to have a good night’s sleep, but the conclusion of inert rest,
Of our ashes on Earth for a million years with
Nothingness of purpose, doesn’t really sit well with
Me being anthropocentric. And I am unable to be 0.1%
Elon Musky enough to go find answers through Neuralink-akin
Grey matter invasive implants, so I manipulate myself into thinkin’
That I become a truth which doesn’t undo itself to zero but elevates to it.
Because the zero that I am is that of Aryabhatta’s – inherently required
To undo the void of the place-value system aka space-time
Graph. So I doze off to sleep, concluding I am integrally entwined.
And then I wake up in ten minutes, laughing at the fool of me trying
To make quantum oscillating sums out of nursery rhymes.
I know you all might infer I am on some highs.
But I do wish sometimes that when a person I love dies,
The memories in their amygdala travel through the ashes to settle inside
My ears—to become a part of my memories through the earwax
That builds up before having an unbearable explosion of tinnitus spike.
While I close my eyes—but this time instead of an explosive spike,
I enter a thick layer of sleep, deeper than earlier, as your
Ashes penetrate to make it to my brain, so I can savour
The Aryabhatta-integral zero that you were,
And the brain fog that arrested you from reaching your
Highest self, owing to days when you felt like methane hydrate
Trapped in permafrost under the high pressure of the Arctic,
And of your belief-woven awareness that
Made you eco-centric; now to live within me if not forever,
Then at least to follow the scheme of life after death as sketched in Coco.
Then I prolly… listen to “Remember Me” and… doze off to sleep.
If I were a bit more aware of where I come from, I would have noticed
That it was a fleeting December desire to be forgotten by all while I still exist—
Which in totality contradicts my conclusion of staying
Alive through the memories of my loved ones.
But even if I did remember, I would choose to be remembered, I guess.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to my people,
Who have permitted me to call them mine,
Who seem to be foreign to a fleeting desire of giving me up from their lives.
So I keep leaving traces of which woods I am gonna wander next,
So when they really feel the need, I will want them to always
Find me, I guess.