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Curses on Flow

by Soorya S Kumar
(Kerala, India)

She walked towards the brook. A crimson sun blasted over the horizon and shards of golden cotton flew across tall palm trees. Gaining a momentum, so unusual , she reached the slimy brook. The pregnant brook nurtured all its baggage of amber dried leaves and ripe flowers. She stood for a moment, as if bathed in Lethe , breathing in wild roses nearby. Dragged by her past, she crippled on to a slice of white marble in thorns. A motion picture began to unfurl in her mind, a restless one indeed but much gratifying as loses turn out to be fulfilling at a point where it slips off the brim.


Strips of broken promises, despair and agony swung before her. All her days shrinking into the pint-sized moment. A lad born with the art of introversion. Her world was painted in grey, exempted from the real one. Being mute to the folk, she was awarded with a rewarding title, "incapable". She loved talking to herself and the inhabitants of her utopia of fantasy. Spending her days in whims and fancies, a thought popped in her that she did not belonged to the unreal reality of the existing place.

Following years of growth and maturity were rooted in marshes of depression and hopelessness. Life has lost all its vitality from its beginning itself, now her only possession, the mind
too staggered into oblivion. Brook slowed down its pace exposing crystal pebbles sparkling under twilight. The day seemed to curl in itself along the blind waves of green water. Wilted buds of Gulmohar making gentle ripples and breaks during the flow.

Encounters with fire, blood and saps gifted her nothing except oily burns, cuts and an ill- coloured skin. A myriad battles that announced her failure, deadly burgeoning day by day. Ends are inevitable but some ends beckon and beckon until you shed everything to reach them. The night began to take shape in its darkness. Stars sprouted near and far, singing love and loss.

Gradually, stepping into the cool waters, she smiled. Took an aesthetic step and moved towards the part of brook where milky waterlilies lifted themselves at night. Moving forward she could feel the currents kissing her anklets so hard. Singing an anonymous sonnet she reached the waterlilies, took in a whiff. Tenderly raising her left leg, she mused at the churning sky and subsequently liberated the other one too. She began to float and by then, plunged deep into the waves. A sight so beautifully sung by stars, of an insane girl floating alongside milky lilies. She hummed something to the moon and all at once, it was over. All those curses she believed to have haunted her made a final encounter and floated too.

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