Vishu¹: Our New Year

Today I mourn myself.
Ashes in the moonlight.
Once, I met myself
with a red suitcase.
My destiny; escape or a blade.

I hawked for
yellow flowers on the streets,
felt their crisp, moist petals, 
bought a bunch when the market
erupted                               with bargains.

My ears tingled with
a yellowness—insisting
on toting a culture;
I lit flickering flames of
the brass lamp which shone
with the twang of tamarind,     and vinegar;

I blindfolded my children,
walked them through
the dark alleys of a sore 
sleepy morning, to display
the opulence                           of a New Year.

The lunisolar days
walked close to me
tip-toeing with the shadows
I hid within my body vase—
flowers, music, a piece of you—
I watched them                            slowly wither.

On my godless dining table
gourds burst, mangoes 
stared tardy, raw cashew 
fruits turned back their
spotted cheeky rear;
a few coins gleamed,
my mother’s antique gold
lost its lustre,                        became darker.

The yellow flowers were
soft and dry by now, I peered 
into the Aranmula mirror²
crowfeet vined up my skin, 
wrinkles erupted from
primordial cells; somewhere far away
they captured a black hole, 
that looked like a wilting 
flower                               on the metal mirror.
Today would be too late.
I begged them No. But darling,
they said you’d be good to me.
Diamond ring and baby’s crib.
Yet misery was born
in the cracks of my brain.
The leaf grown on our day, now
buried under weeping rivers.
To the river I dragged my
bare feet till I reached the
leaves and slept for eternity.

¹ Vishu is a festival celebrated as the New Year  in one of the Indian states, Kerala.

² Aranmula mirror is a handmade metal-alloy mirror, made in Aranmula, a small town in Kerala, India.