The Crouching Goddess

By Neelima Chakraborty

…and in that moment

I lost it!

I had felt its heat coiling around my naked flesh

long back.

Am no stranger to its tingling sensation

the growing ripples of unfathomable sentiment

surging with every rise of decibel

waiting stealthily at the corner

of the lips watered by the steady stream of salinity.

The rage

that emanates from the exhausted expletives

that subsumes the strands of equanimity

that hurtles onto the precipice

tipping me over into a freefall

that glowers and burns my insides

until I go numb with the pain.

I had let it in in my adolescence

let it feed on the warmth of my blood

let it dissolve into the cells and tissues

let it course through my being.

I had welcomed it

and watered it in the melancholy

that clutched at my throat

in the dark nights of quiet breeze

withdrew my hopes inside letters of rejection

soiled with tattered hopes

and translucent dreams.

Defiant.

I now felt it

in the cold whispers

of the strange men and women

seated in my living room

garrulous tongues gauging my worth

leering at my sexuality

bartering terms of my freedom with alacrity.

…and in that moment

I lost it!

I let go of the crass civility

that chains me to the invisible diktat of decency

let go of the nexus of norms

that corrugates and wields my identity

let go of the fears that fashioned my words

let the fire take over

let its flames devour

the insipid views to ashes

let it unleash the crouching goddess.

By Neelima Chakraborty