Sunil P Narayan lives on the West Coast and describes his poetry as “a journey of self-exploration and an attempt to understand how the world is and what my family means to me.” This poem is as much about birth as death and love as distance.
I Will Stay With You
By Sunil P Narayan
A window cold and made of ice
Blue as if the ocean froze for me
Air so thin and reluctant to let me take it in
Down into my lungs which have lost all their moisture
I can see the world of smoking fish, eyes so black
Little black pearls of the Polynesian Islands pushed into their sockets
You are nowhere to be found mother!
I wait in this little home made of unbreakable ice cubes
Sounds of the ocean’s breathing and heartbeat
The table being hit by my iron fingers
Ouch! Hear the vibration pass between my fingers
Gone is the blue flesh you created me from.
Everyone fell asleep to leave me to watch
A world no more in existence yet lingers on
Passing each planet now evolved into tiny stars
I call them your diamonds, mother
Mother cut stones out of the black silk worn by father
I waited for life to rush into my body
A soul with no form, just pure imperceptible light
I couldn’t watch myself endure the pain she caused me
If a new body of existence is created, let her be a woman!
To contain all animals and plants within the womb
A garden nourished by the spring flowing from her breasts
She gives two rivers for anything that breathes
My mother I once knew with a fear of her gentle yet tough exterior
Now she is dead, waiting inside God’s heart for me to call her
I gave myself to the man with penetrable skin and eye sockets without light
An act of love to bring myself to mom, only to find myself stuck in limbo
