the faceless abductor

death was but a catastrophe in the neighbour’s house/in yours-a sympathetic murmur, and a sigh/until, your favourite poet’s treachery knocks you down/and you cry out-“why had she romanticized ‘it’?”

the harlequin in your courtyard, one spring morning, fades, then blackens/the whiff of charred petals stinging your nostrils/while apathetic clouds hover over your helpless little fairytale kingdom

a faceless abductor stands at your doorstep, an unwelcome guest/chaperoned by a gush of choking wind/the family photo frame comes crashing down on the hardwood/and you step on those red shards of glass (you never meant to)

it is here, you can tell (though it withdraws every time you extend your hand)/its veil hides neither a Frankensteinian gentleman, nor Grendel’s mother/only, the unshackling of pain, clouded by/the doomed shriek of an orphan

there is no introduction, only an uncertain farewell/before you dissipate into a flickering light which calls itself/’the presence of an absence’-its flame sometimes burning, at other times igniting/but in the end, self-destructing

in your little kingdom, helpless but not fairytale anymore/the rains expunge every evidence of injury, just like/they washed away the soil where the oak tree had been uprooted/you feel no pain, only an absence-a diminishing black hole/and you idolize your favourite poet again

 

[Originally published in Quail Bell Magazine and republished in Moledro Magazine]