The air is heavy.
Ricocheting off the walls
rather slowly
and bleeding down
to where we sit in the silence
that has now conceived unknown conceit
within the conniving folds of
its unassuming quietude.
Silence is rather fertile.
If a seed is even so much as
carelessly flung
without ceremony or remorse;
worse -
without thought,
silence impregnates.
And out grow roots
and ever so voluminous bodies
that otherwise would have
died an anonymous death.
Your expectant breath,
has sucked in all that
was buoyant in its freedom
and left behind leaden,
hot air
that creeps up along my back
and sits on my shoulder,
while I slouch deeper every day
in the corner
that has no windows.
In this rancid air,
we etch out
with drawn pauses between breaths
our Xs and Os
on the tic-tac-toe board
that once was
a fun escapade in fleeting chalk
and now,
is an inescapable maze
circumambulated in spirit.
How did you get so bloated,
that whatever’s within you
couldn’t even pass through
as fleeting flatulence,
but lay repressed
till it festered
into the sickeningly sweet,
rotten stench that
poisoned decay owns?
Oppression,
when passive;
drives the oppressed insane
in the possibility that
it is a mere blasphemous illusion.
And this ambivalence
is what cements together
the bricks
in this persecutor's home.
Maybe I could have chosen
to not wear the noose
your baleful eyes
lassoed me in with;
speaking in tongues
that reverberated inside me
until your words
escaped as mine.
But in trying to avoid the noose
I had to keep glancing at it,
and maybe
this is what
made it more tangible,
secure.
The air is heavy today
and close to a delivery,
as the umbilical chord of
unwarranted sighs
stretches out to clear the throat.
I too, am crouched,
bent over within myself
like a fetus
ready to stretch,
and maybe today
there’ll be two births.
Image Courtesy: OpenAI's interpretation of an ouroboros if it were created by the Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski
Another week, another few miles around the ball of fire that culminate in an arbitrary measure of eternal time. This week we explore themes of oppression, but not the ones that have valiant fights for justice to their names, but the kinds that are silent in a manner in which their perception as oppression could be assumed as an act of oppression in itself. I talk about the ambivalent kinds, the ones that exist in the best of relationships and run the worst ones. The kinds that take on many forms like the mythological gods, becoming and perpetuating obligation, duty, purpose, ideal, and possibly even truth.
It is this oppression that we often mistake for love, as care, as proof of a concept that we have no way of knowing but want to desperately believe: belongingness. Isn't it the sweet sting of this oppression that sometimes gives us the pleasure we so desire—of being as we have been taught? Is it always burdensome? No. This kind of oppression doesn't deal in absolutes; it lives in the land of in-betweens, rocking on the see-saw while we run in circles to keep the balance at the more bearable centre.
Today's prose is about the unsaid oppression that rules the atmosphere of a home, especially after something unsavory has been brought for consumption by all. It attempts to capture the moment from consumption to the actual expression of unsavoriness, in the midst of which oppression runs its course with both parties feeling its singular existence. This prose is about two births—one of each of the parties repressed, for in their stories, both are. One could also look at it through the lens of the birth of the first rebellion, which will then change the course of this relationship forever.
It could also be the inner oppression of one's self-judgement projected in ways that render the innocent bystander a persecutor.
It could also be the collective chaos that precedes the birth of the balance that is much needed.
It could be a mere fight for peaceful silence.
It could be a story of no significance beyond the moment of its occurrence, thereby unworthy of revisiting twice. It could also be the very relationship you share with your loved ones in moments of angst.
In all that it could be, it could be many things. But it will be especially specific for you. And whatever it is for you, you will know that it is what you must birth next, if only to regain the balance you secretly crave. Here's to a day seeking balance.
Happy Sunday!