The Silent Communion

By Amlan Hossain

A horizonless sea meets the sky,

Not a bird to breathe the empty air,

No fish to thread the needle of his hunger,

No whisper of land even to lie.

The ocean mocks with its vastness,

Each wave is a hand of emptiness.

Reaching out to him but with nothing to offer

It has been three days, his body is now a burning house,

Flesh clenched, hollowed by the furnace within.

Salt cuts his lips, his tongue swollen

With the taste of despair.

He chews on the silence, gnawing

At the marrow of his own thoughts.

"What else can I consume so I can live" - he wonders

Upon all options around him, he ponders

His thoughts grow dark, his mind a storm,

No food but flesh to stay alive?

The thought of cannibals takes form—

To eat himself, or not survive.

He turns it over in his mind,

For a moment getting disgusted with it,

But then, he starts to peer through the cracked lens

Of philosophies, of faiths, he has never believed.

"Existence precedes essence,"

Jean Sartre whispers in the dying wind,

And he sees himself as a god

Of his own hunger.

To eat is to exist; to exist is to choose—

And isn't choice the burden of man?

But to eat oneself?

Is that a feast or a funeral?

Jesus speaks in parables of loaves and fishes,

But here, there is neither miracle nor bread—

Only skin, and bone, and the gnawing ache of need.

"Eat my flesh, drink my blood,"

He mutters, half-mad, half-praying,

The sea is a silent congregation.

The Christians warn of mortal sin—

"Thou shalt not kill" extends within.

Yet on this boat, does God abide?

Did not Christ, too, his flesh divide?

But would his own blood redeem him,

Or damn him deeper into a fathomless void?

The man recalls tales from ancient wars,

Where famine forced both sinners and saint

To eat the dead to keep life’s flame—

‘Necessity makes the forbidden, permissible,’

The verses of Qu'ran and

Principles of Shari'ah echo in his brain.

Allah is said to be merciful,

He reasons even in the dark,

His survival might make this sea

Created by Khuda to cleanse this stain.

The tribal pasts in distant lands

Had once endorsed these final stands.

When famine struck and all seemed lost,

The old ones turned to life’s cruel cost.

To feed on kin, to break the skin,

It was a ritual, not the vilest sin.

Survival then was not a stain,

But part of nature’s endless chain.

Yet modern faiths have banished this,

Declaring such acts sacrilege.

But who defines what rules persist

When faced with death upon the edge?

And in the eye of his own storm,

He confronts the devil of his thoughts:

"To eat myself is suicide," he realises,

"But to starve, when I could eat, is also suicide," he says

But then he thinks, of how every faith says

The body is but a vessel, and the soul is free

He thinks, "If the soul, atmaan and rooh,

Are the bearers of my truth, my dharma

Then why should I question consuming my flesh

In calamity, and I have to conduct aapad-dharma."

As the thoughts of cannibalism,

Settles in his mind like dust after a storm,

He accepts that the last resort to survive is this -

To eat human flesh

In his mind, he justifies it in bliss.

But then he remembers, he is not alone

On the boat, there is someone else,

And his thoughts start to jumble again.

"She is with me," he remembers.

The love of his life, her face pale as moonlight,

A silent witness and unaware of his thoughts.

He looks into her eyes, and she looks back

Her eyes are hollow mirrors,

Reflecting his hunger back at him.

He now sees her as just a human body—

And he wonders, in a darkness that is his own.

She perhaps thinks that death is nearby,

He is looking at her for the final time.

And the ocean starts to speak in waves cold,

He holds her hand and wonders still—

His love for life, or the love of his life,

Which love will he choose at will?

Which love will he choose to kill?

By Amlan Hossain