By Gayathri Amarkumar
Wax melts onto the metal plate,
Forming patterns to fill the young mind’s brain,
Shaped like the belly of the old man across street
A belly that rises and falls with him as he speaks,
His flubber like skin rippling with bellows of joy,
Or perhaps it is the idol that sits under the village tree,
Between soot and mirk and dust, it lays barely noticed by its greatest of adorers.
She once again stares at the candle flame,
Watching it curve and sway to a beat unheard,
Water drips down the edges of the roof
covered with fluffy clouds and browned paint,
Falling into the pots that fill the space,
Creating sanctuaries for little fishes to play,
Oblivious and confused that mysteriously morph into frogs.
Perhaps they hated how they began and decided to change
Escaping the confines that the water forced it to obey,
Huddling around the light they hush and whisper,
Shadows and figures dancing on the walls,
“Ruler of an ancient kingdom” or “ghosts of a forgotten murders” they wonder,
Through cracked walls and broken doors,
Tales they weave to escape the hues and cries of the streets.
Embers thrown into the air, left for ashes to cover the blood,
Why do they kill? For the God they say
Mother lays her latest experiments on the floor,
Her tiny attempt to distract her from wounds on her face,
They pretend it's like buffets from the ends of Earth,
Cheers! They sip from rims that reek of liquor,
For their heads seem to weave dreams to replace memories.
As new life sprouts amid this advanced state of decay,
making sense of marred, rotten flesh that satiates the belly of a mankind,
“They don't kill for God,” she declares, “for even the sacred has now experienced abandonment.”