Every year, when the sky rubs the ashes of a cloud on its tired eyelids
it descends...
Not a river, but like some forgotten memory
springing from the roots of the earth
once again sets out to mold its lost utterance into water
Its flow neither speed nor delay
like an ancient vow
every monsoon returns to the same path
where the soil still owes its name.
It doesn't bring water, but brings the silence that grew like a seed
in the cracks of the sand
and now drop by drop
is beginning to take on meaning
It flows as if some old curse
washes itself away creating a language of liberation
At every turn it writes a new disagreement,
On the rocks
In the roots of uprooted peepal trees
In the cracks of that last, unmade bridge
From where no one returns
Sometimes she touches the fields
As if a beloved has returned
To the smell of that body
Which she hasn't forgotten for years
And then like a tired breath
Carries that same soil within her
As love, when it can't be bound
It flows away silently, wordless, undeniable
Within her flow
The names of villages flow,
Which now only the breaths of dry wells recognize—
Or those thresholds
Which once saw the shadow of feet on them
When she flows
It feels
As if a goddess
Having given up her immense wealth
Returns alone
Within herself
And when
Sawan surrenders itself
Gets lighter
The river too
Like some unknown wave
To be absorbed It seems
in the whirlpool
there is no mourning
no celebration—
only what remains on the shore
a few old bangles
a few broken boats
unfinished nests
and
relationships entangled in the roots of trees
and
a few tired footprints
that the next rain
will carry back there again.
The rainy river—
is history, a memory
a ritual of sorrow
not water, but a fever—
that returns every year
to descend
to pour out
accumulated pain and frustration
into a new form
