Silent river

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