By Soumya Nigam
While I was dancing in the pleasant drizzle,
Beneath an infinite rainbow
The tides pounded against their homes
Pulling away battered bricks
and tarpaulin roofs.
Homes and hopes, cracked in two.
and as I splashed in the shallow puddles
my feet, clad in smiling yellow wellingtons
were drenched in maroon water,
stained
with the blood of their lost children
Now I am grownup and mannered
to the point of silence
padding noiselessly over soft plush rugs while
the sea screams
and yanks the ground out from under their feet
and they are gasping, frantically pleading,
their hands still clinging to the last doomed log
as the tide of bodies crashes against the rocks.
I am the cause. I am the silent robber
guarding my loot in my too-giant cave, the doors
locked to the crowds who cry for aid.
I write in sympathy, my blue ink is a toxin
which soaks and chokes
their helpless throats
in my inertia
to stop it
Stop it!
The words and numbers clang deafeningly around my brain
Useless as a paper boat in an ocean of tears
My numb hands quiver as
the sugar disappearing into yet another coffee
turns into a scattering of corpses
disfigured or swallowed up whole
It is dangerous to look at the news.
Each time I turn the TV off and on
huddled up in blankets and reassuring hugs
sipping restlessly from bottomless cups
Another family drowns.