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The Bed

by Pooja Agarwal
(Kanpur, India)

I saw you today . . .

naked and sprawled
on that over-sized
four-poster mahogany bed,
getting your body massaged.
You were lying face down,
your hazel-nut brown back
smooth and spotless,
but for that one huge
grayish-black mole,
a little under the left shoulder.

Your back was being rubbed
every knot in every muscle
being smoothened out
gently . . . years of pain,
fatigue, and adamant arthritis,
yielding to the touch of those fingers.

And then those fingers touched the mole
the big grayish-black mole that stood
against your skin like a piece of dark,
dizzying lake or a still pond
on an arid landscape.

And in that moment,
Something happened to me,
like a flash of reverie
cutting a sharp image in my mind . . .
A hungry tongue,
slithering on your mole,
a pair of dark hands,
grabbing your back,
and rubbing it in a frenzy
of bodily lust,
with you yielding eagerly,
equally hungry, equally lustful.

The bed where you lay today,
face-down, was the same bed
where all those years ago,
you had made love,
profusely and ardently
night after night.
It was the same bed
where your had once been squirming in pain,
giving birth to my mother,
and it was the same bed,
on which they had had you sit
while they broke your red bangles.
And last winter,
It was the same bed
Where you lay
Hot with rheumatic fever.

And today as your weight
presses on the bed,
it groans creakily,
almost as if in fulfilment,
like that of an orgasm.

I wonder if isn’t
the bed
your final mate?
***