to estha, the god of small things (part 1)

karunam (pathos)

I was 13 when I first met you, static as boys should be

while I coiled like a fetus in my bathtub,

watching everything I’d ever known  

rally into drains.

I’m stiff except for the cerulean streams of history that flow beneath my skin.

I’ve never been less lonely or more content,

Nestled between ceramic and public water, filling sentences

With words you never said.

Led Zeppelin-

Drown the air,

Drown the notes of my parents contending

Over bone-shaped childhoods,

Erode my breath between boulders of

Rock.

I bled dry into what I perceived you to be. I did not cry but I hoped you’d still hold me,

The way fiction sometimes creeps into your shirt.

In cold, distant wheezes.

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Footnotes: this is a part of an awfully long poem i’m working on, based on the Navarasangal (or the nine facial emotions) of Kathakali (a form of classical dance and storytelling native to Kerala, India). Esthappen from Arundhati Roy’s ‘God Of Small Things’, to whom the poem is addressed, is a very important character to me for various reasons. i’ll be uploading the other parts soon.