Delirium

Waking up with a jerk, sweat streaming down my neck, I look around frantically...
The cold steel walls stand mute; the pillow next to mine is cold, sheets unruffled...

Sweat is glistening on my pulsating jugular...
A flutter of the eye lids - we are together in the same bed, thrusting into each other in frenzy, panting, grunting, your deep crimson nails clawing at my bare back...
A flutter of the eye lids - you are running among the glowing sunflowers, I am behind in close chase, almost reaching and touching the tassels of dark flowing hair, I hear laugher...
A flutter of the eye lids - my face is drenched in warm sweat, or blood...

Slumping with exhaustion, feels like I am floating, a sudden blur of voices, an orgy of vision, a lingering smell of something decaying...
I lift my head from the pillow, resting my chin in my palms, staring at strange patterns, numerous rivers, valleys, stains of time, time when we were together...

A long strand of hair floats on the pillow, I clutch it tight, as if a precious possession, a souvenir now...
A swirling calm enters my veins, your head is on my shoulder, I am caressing your hair, weaving my fingers into the black abyss...
The hands emerge, green and strange, not my hands, a stranger's hands, still caressing your hair, still cupping your breasts, strangling my throat...

How could you let the beast touch you? How could you?

I clutch the pillow and scream in agony, a scream that is music in this otherwise deafening silence of loneliness...
My fingers touch something cold - a glass bangle you removed and slid under the pillow before you let me ravage you...
The bangle is cold and grey, like this room, these walls around, but I remember it once shown like a rainbow, glittered on your delicate wrists...

Your delicate wrists, those milky white palms, almost pale - ghostly...
The touch of those fingers, the still wet designs on the palm, fresh, vermillion vines, mixing, dancing...
Struggling wrists, getting out of my hold, I hold on tighter, closing my fingers...the crumbling glass, the sharp pain, the bluish green venom oozing through my fingers...
It’s not venom; it’s your blood...

Or mine. The bangle lies broken in my palm. The blood is dry and crusted, the pillow stained anew...
I sit up, swing my legs down, a painful effort to get up, walk to the wash basin...
Shivering, things around me flying, this dizziness...
I lunge at the wall, trying to stop my fall, my hand slips, leaving a brown streak, leaving me slumped on the floor...

Amma is standing above me, placing a wet cloth on my forehead...
Her black robes hovering like the comforting night, her warm hands, touching my cheek, spilling dutiful love...
Her look is confusing, her eyes killing, there is no sympathy, just a half mocking smirk...
I want her to say everything will be fine, but there is no reassurance...
I did just what she told me not to: I loved you, I trusted you.

You were my life, my breath, the window in these four walls...
I bared everything and stood naked, stood naked, so you could hurt me, stood naked, like a fool, so you could betray me the moment I turned around...
I’ve tried to find meaning, in vain. I have tried to question the worth of those days in unison, every moment bringing me close to god, every word spoken - burning my heart, every touch changing my soul...

And it all fell apart so quickly, I am left naked and confused, gasping for air and crying, like a baby out of the womb...
Maybe it was all a dream, your laughter was but a trick played on a vacant mind, your touch but the zephyr's prank...
But these wounds, they feel so real. This blood, why does it taste so real?

I stretch my arms through the bars of the window...
The cold winter rain washes the dry blood, pain rushes back in fury as I pull out the pieces of glass...
It is all real after all. Those feelings, those promises. All real, all lost, all broken.

You didn’t even give me a hint it was coming...you could have at least warned me before...so I could have made my heart stronger...
And so I float in this delirium...like a head severed from the body with a sudden swing of the sword, squirming and writhing, in confusion and surprise, in agony...neither dead, nor alive...

iyer