We find ourselves in people, places, poetry and perennial mirrors divulging the endless wavelength that is the self. But who is ‘I’? A fragmented whole in quest of coherence, of sense that selfhood makes and doesn’t. An essence, treading the speeding path of light, I traverse multitudes and reach the end empty handed. Who is ‘I’?
I sit for a portrait, painted in reds and blues and violets and indigos; the whole spectrum, I disperse into laughs and tears and headaches. O to ache and become known. I am a body of knowledge, of knowing, understanding, comprehending – maybe.
The old drum of my heart,
I, I, I….
I am nothingness, shunya- the end and the beginning. I ache in my mother’s womb, I perish.
But I ache and I hope. I is in the hope, it’s in the portraiture of hope. All portraits embezzle hope, available to all, known to none. I is infinite, I is incomprehensible. But I find it in TV shows, in heroines washing dishes, grandmothers knitting and children longing.
“It’s bed time kids!”
I jumps headfirst. I is relentless. It needs sleep and its favourite blanket. All long journeys are possible with a good blanket.
I write,
a biography of the self everlooking in the mirror, the void and the cup. Eyes fanned out like elephant ears, I look, I look and I open like a lotus, eyes fanning the 360. I look.
Death. Hermitude. Queen with an empty cup.
I read my palms, empty. Who is I?
Maybe, ergo sum. Maybe, ergo sum non.
Reflections do not come easy. Representations do. I stand behind a wall; with tricks of my masonry I build, I build and I build some more. Behold a portrait. The sum of sweat and bedazzled in blood. Ergo, behind.
Do you see me?
Mangled in hunger, I’m erased in the ache of the stomach. I’m only a care, of a single apple. Forbidden. Plucked. Consumed, endlessly. In fractions and multiplications. Luminous progenation.
People, places, poetry, perennial mirrors. I.
Edited by Sreepriya
Design by Vasuki
Article 19 