words by Zoha Suteria, art by Ananya Sairaman
I had a dream so vast and grand,
golden-skinned and heavy with sun
perfumed with the possibility
of all that I could become.
It smelled of summer mornings,
of open doors and distant lands,
of the life I pressed my palms against,
while walking down a different path.
I harbored this dream beneath my ribs,
a bright fruit tangled deep inside,
its sweetness flowered in my flesh,
its hunger one within my mind.
I feared the world would sink its teeth
into the life I sought to guard,
that it would make a stranger of
this glorious dream I knew by heart.
So I tore it from my burning chest,
still warm with all its wanting gleam
and set it on the highest shelf,
forever perfect and pristine.
I hoped so dearly for one day,
and let the words take root and bloom,
a luscious promise strong enough
To break the heavy, creeping gloom.
As all the days passed slowly by,
it kept its shine, its spirit whole,
while I learned to live with empty hands,
and slowly starved my restless soul.
As weeks went by, amid the gold,
a bruise appeared, and molded fast,
the first brown leaf of seasons I
had prayed would never come to pass.
The weeks unstitched its brightness,
the months thinned its velvet skin;
pale tendrils crept around the stem,
and sweetness soured from within.
It wept against the clock’s slow pressure,
its flesh gave way to the unseen;
the sun still fell upon the shelf,
but nothing golden answered me.
There was a garden in my body
where nothing green can ever grow.
The buds of all I might have been,
had shriveled up so long ago.
And somewhere in my beating chest,
the roots withdrew from thirsty earth.
The marrow darkened, the light grew faint,
the garden forgot what it was worth.
My spine bent slowly toward the earth,
my shoulders learned the weight of stone;
I wore the shape of something living,
but felt the vigor leave my bones.
I watched the others taste their summers,
juice running red along their hands;
their mouths were full of bitten futures,
their smiles bright with the zest of chance.
I hated their teeth that tore the rind,
their hands that dared to take and keep;
a frozen venom curdled in my pulse,
a bitter rust inside my grief.
I curse the world that stole my appetite,
the hands that bound my youth—
and in the dark, ashamed and cold,
I curse my own untruth.
The years fell quiet as they passed,
the days grew pale around their seams;
somewhere, colors faded into a grey,
somewhere, I had forgotten how to dream.
One day, I lifted up my eyes
to where I’d left my little sun;
yet the shelf held only a collapsed skin,
a darkness where the gold had been.
The stem corroded to a thread,
the flesh had sunk into itself;
the air was thick with stagnance rotting,
with years gone rancid on that shelf.
I touched it, and it crumbled,
a soft decay against my skin.
The dust clung to my open fingers
like something trying to get in.
I had believed that love could keep it,
that time would spare what I held dear;
but even stars grow cold in darkness,
and even gold will disappear.
So, the sweetness turns to alcohol,
a sharp, fermenting sting;
its putrid pulp
unravels at
my touch,
and reeks
of a dying thing.
A bitter liquor
seeps into me,
and salts the blood that moves below.
I carry its ruin
into my marrow,
until even my bones begin to spoil.
My heart turns dark around its chambers,
its doors swollen shut with despair.
Even grief
grew tired of knocking;
even sorrow
no longer lingers there.
Now poison grows where
love once gathered,
a blight unfurling through my heart;
The air inside my lungs
turns to dust and heavy silt.
As my nerves are pulled and torn apart.
There is no fruit beneath my ribs now,
no golden hunger,
no seed to sow.
Only the hollow of a body
that has forgotten
how to grow.
I cannot say
the world did not bind me.
I cannot say
I chose the chain.
I only know I kept on waiting
until waiting was all that
remained.
I am
my dream,
and I am
no
more.
