Cactus - A Poem Poem by Sreekala Sivasankaran

Sharp-edged words
Fly across the day
At every passing second
Cutting the soft fleshy life

Fallen teeth, fallen grey hair
On the floor, the ants crawl
In the milk mixed with blood

The gloom of the rainy season
Has distributed itself so generously
As coldness and darkness at noon

The green water-filled stem is an amputated leg today
The water that seeps from it smells and kills

The lone earthenware in the corner
Still has the memory of Nila
Like a moving snake
The silver lines of her pathways to extinction

Turn your face away
The man behind the bamboo curtain
Mr.X with his raised leg on the head
Of the new-born in the mother's lap
Is a real life story

Don't look into the garden
Where the corpses found refuge
From strangeness to anonymity

The kindness of the cactus in the desert
Is more than a memory
On a day like this

~ Sreekala Sivasankaran