Content Warning: mental illness, suicidal ideation

​

Ram,

Dawn  cracks

            on the bowl  of a dream.

​

And I,  a  hooting

            Amāvásyā.  Plumed  by

my very lacking.

Preened  by the runny
            yolk of  day

as you peel back
     the sleep-skin off me.

Ram.
            Ram.
                        Ram,
           

            I have so much to tell you.

My Devi, you say and chuckle
            at my drool.

I stuff a rose in your mouth
            and   splice you   back  to me
                                   
                                                     leg   and  leg

                                                                                    lumbering    into that bowl.

​

​

What I don’t tell you:

On night’s cool sleeve,

I wipe my lusts.

I twist them back

in furrows of black hunger —

Each woman becomes
     my sowing.  My emptiness tilled.

Each woman,  a neurotic eye
            that won’t shut   as I go
into the blazing white  of suicides.

Your darling still,

S

​

​

Letters to Ram is a series of epistolary poems retelling the story of Sita, considering she speaks very little in the Ramayana. "Dreaming in Chitrakut" is my second offering in the series and a fictitious account of a day in the life of Sita, who is in exile with Ram, where she has a dream foreshadowing the agni pariksha (trial by fire) she would soon endure. The poem seeks to rework Sita as a woman navigating young love, the dichotomy of her husband as both god and man, while also exploring potential trauma/neurosis.