Dark Bird

Loneliness is a curious bedfellow

crawling between blankets

when the night is pale

his cold edges

encircling

how I have shivered

at this touch.

But today I turned

to offer my hand

and asked what he had to teach me.

I let him carry me to my knees.

In the moonlight

he grew slim

and stood before me as a mirror

his void reflected back

this wide-eyed gaze

this warm skin

the film of breath upon the glass

alive with longing

Slowly he became a bird

of darkness

hovering above my hands

I kissed it softly

cradling it like a beloved child

my lips on cold feathers

gloriously alive

I have not yet been claimed by death.

It spread its wings before me

until they became a

dark doorway into the

house of joy.

Lent

(Written on Ash Wednesday two years ago.  What began as a lament for a girl begging on the streets of Mumbai and became also a lament for the little girl within me.)

Little girl, who peers through smears of soot

which blur and run in the rain,

this lament is for you.

Life once fluttered around your shoulders

shimmered as it nested in your hair

chirping and humming as the air filled with light.

It lies broken now beneath the earth.

I too, have been marked with ashes

the dust of ancient hosannas

and so we meet death in each other's eyes.

Beneath the shroud of water and cloud

the throaty wail begins.

This lament is for you.

For you behind the windowpane

with prickling skin and ragged palms

as raindrops melt the waxen glass

you who have no name.

Behind this jail of ashen skin

we strain to hear the rooftops wail

in the dusky moments before breath

we wait for the creak of footsteps on the stair

for the rustle and murmur from corners of the room

for the ancient words that light the air

“Talitha Koum! Little girl, get up!

You no longer dwell in the cold, dark places

the death-fumed spaces

You are named in to life!

Exhale the stale air of the tomb,

you are fresh and new! Get up!”

But today the stench of decay

hangs in the folds of cloth

as my palm meets yours across the glass

we are blue-lipped with death

we have not yet learned to breathe

Let the Naming begin.