The Resurrection

Egon Schiele

HIM:

What happens to roses when they turn dry?

When morning dew pearls onto their petals?

When petals whirl down to the floor, sifting through the air?

Or when a ladybug crawls over its rippled skin?

A spider?

A black ant?

What’s hidden inside?

What do roses reveal when they’re undone?

What about their thorns?

How do roses smell?

Can dew or a ladybug take their scent away?

Why do we pick them to drown them in a vase?

HER:

I want to undo my body, break it down into its constituent parts and build it up again: a naked temple consecrated to you.

The roses are wilting, their yellow flesh droops towards the earth in an act of surrender, the red ones are poignant, haughty; they will not abandon themselves so easily. They will unfurl slowly and spread their moist perfume.

Roses make me heady. I like to preserve them, hang them upside down, on a line— to let the petals dry, to let the leaves curl. I want to trick time, escape mortality and preserve the moment of the rose, her scent, her being, her essence.

I wish I could preserve the moment of my body, when you were contained within my folds, when you moved inside me, relentlessly, and my face contorted into a question mark, eased into a comma, slipped into a set of ellipses and undid a moan and my mouth was bereft of words.

In my last life I was a dried red rose, naked on a mantle. You were a shadow, lurking over me, your fingers slicing their way into my skin, my still, soft petals. You made gestures over my flesh. You merged into me, when the fire was low and the evening was wearing thin, you tightened your grip, quickened your stride and moved inside me with a raging force. You breathed life into my slowly-dying-slowly-rising soul; that warm pit inside of me that melts all over your flesh.

You quivered; your lips breathing their last as you heaved inside me till spirit and all came tumbling down and you slipped alongside of me.

Unravel me.

Unwind my petals.

Unwrap my soul.

Wear me thin, soft and precious, like second skin.

Slide into me. Let me contain you with the silence of a wind sighing over a field of roses— red and scarlet, wild and free, pungent, moist, complete.

NAME

Name?

Nameless!

Nameless city on the bank of a nameless river

Nameless fingers on the brink of a bank

Come to my nameless city.

I have seen your fingers itching to enter,

Peeping through buttonholes, afraid of being caught,

Aching to scale the heights of my flesh,

Your longing singing through the cotton of your clothes,

Your knuckles knocking against my doors,

Pilgrim fingers begging to be let in.

I give you the keys to my city.

Slip into my marsh pit, my slush ditch,

Walk this strait, this corridor

Walk through my lush terrain,

Walk this secret underground.

Invade my nameless city in the dark of night while it is asleep.

Lay siege upon this fertile ground!

Take hostage all its stories and ruins, its past, my past,

My childhood innocence, adolescent lust, my anxious maturity.

Come lightly, so very slightly till you reach the nectar sea.

Burn my nameless city with your fingerprinting ecstasy

I am inflammable! Watch me combust!

Watch the sea erupt into flames,

Watch the aether congest with smoke,

Watch stone melt, brick break,

Watch diamonds spill into the small of your hand.

Watch these little deaths that make my city

Nameless.

Nameless city of a million lives

Nameless city of a million deaths

Nameless city built on the banks of exuberance

Nameless city on the brink of a flood

Nameless city built upon ruins of past cities, ruin upon ruin upon ruin upon ruin

Nameless city without cartography

Nameless city of prophecy

Nameless city of glinting stones

Nameless city babbling in tongues;

Nameless city of eternity;

Eternally Nameless

City, Nameless City,

Your City,

Your Nameless City,

Yours Namelessly.

Monsoonal

The rain evokes memories of you sleeping beside me while a storm raged through a Delhi sky and water slid along the windows and slipped through my body till you were drenched in the deluge.

As I write this, there is the ominous grinding of clouds as their bodies churn against each other and moan across the sky, their thunderous sighs, loud and clamourous, like Regina when she holds that single key; Apres moi, le deluge.

It’s been like this all day. It reminds me of all the monsoons that I have lived in this city by the sea. It reminds me of childhood, when I was a little girl and I came home soaked, my socks wet from wading through two feet puddles of water. On the way was a garage and oil would splatter into gushing little streams and we could trace all the colours of the rainbow. My hair soggy, with rain. My lemon yellow and blue uniform, moist and greasy. There were times when I would invoke the rain as if it were a raging fire. I would ask it to grow stronger so that the city would flood and there wouldn’t be school the next day.

I am still a little girl, fascinated by rain. I shudder; still, at the sound of thunder, and lightning in the sky still causes a sparkle in my eyes. The monsoons move me. There is something about the waves crashing blindly against Marine Drive, Worli Seaface or Carter Road or Bandra Bandstand…

This island city feels the weight of its body, her flesh comes alive and she becomes all spirit and matter, flesh and soul. The sea clashes against her shores till we are all alive again, fertile, animated, spirited, whole; if only for those few minutes when it pours ravenously and the stars creep behind a heap of pregnant clouds.

In this rain-drenched, post-midnight-morning, I hold you close beside me. My body still shudders at the sound of thunder and I move closer to you, in search of shelter from the storm.

You move inside me like the rain; virile, certain, unafraid, full of rhythm, motion, spirit and flesh. You clash against me like a violent wave, tempered by storm. You move me and I rain all over you,  a clamourous patter, not a trickle or a drip-drop, a thirsty shower replete with  longing and voluptuous sighs.

You are drenched in my deluge.