Sense

He lay in a cloud of something that melted into his being, swirled him around, drew a veil over his thoughts and made as simple an action as moving his hand impossible. Thunder crashed outside his cloud, and rain poured everywhere. Rain fell to the earth in great sorrow-filled drops, collectively soaking their sorrow in tellurian salt. He didn’t notice, and didn’t care to. He lay in his cloud like he was floating on a giant waterbed, weightless and immobile. His body was light and free, his soul shackled by chains of iron to the unnamed. His eyes were closed because the reality his world inside offered was more compelling than any pittance of reality the outside world could offer.

He spun in a greenish ethereal mist, high above the earth, diving in abandon to the depths of the ugly city, rising up unscathed to court the angels watching above, danced through the clouds playing peek-a-boo with the sun and finally stood swathed in the silver light of the moon, letting his shadow fall long and strange on the world below. It had lied to, loved, hurt and bewitched him.

Her smiling photo lay cracked and shattered on the floor.

She emerged from the photo, in a million real colours, and smiled at him. Her fingers brushed past his, tempting, tantalizing. She was in black and white now, and earth and green then, blue and silver next, her eyes sparked like clear water and her hair danced light on her shoulders when she moved. She reached out to him, and oh, so tantalizingly close but he could not reach out to her… he was free, and bound, but wait… now, she was an animation, she was a queen in a tiara and an azure silk gown and she danced, oh, how she danced, it lifted his shattered heart to see her dance so fast, faster and faster but oh the real her would never again dance like this, it broke his heart, spinning so fast she was a blur….

The blur spiraled into a ghost town that he could see from his green mist above. In pitiful age worn poverty struck colour he saw the houses and the roads, the people and the shops. His mother and his father, colours mismatched and hues faded. A cotton sari folded neatly on an armchair. There was sound now, painful, painful sound searing through his soul, voices that were never meant to be raised, words never to be uttered, all resounding inside his head, secrets never meant to be revealed, all in agonizing clarity and absolutely distinct, unmistakable.

There were sobs, then vision was blurred, everything was distorted, he could taste the salt, even now, the salt, not in the dal, not in the fresh rotis, he could taste the wheat, now he could taste the alcohol, he could taste it now, acidic, warming, burning. He could see again the courtroom, forbidding and decisive, endless time in the courtroom, an eternity, and disappointment crashing down like thunder, thunder, and rain washing away the tears but leaving a void, emptiness and a hollow racking dry sob that wrings everything out of you….

Left with nothing but the custody of her two children. Nowhere to send them, nothing to feed them. Yet, they had survived, grown, and she had died happy. Back then there was nothing, but they had the future that held everything to live for… but now, now was the future, and the future now held nothing…

He smelt her perfume on his skin, on his lips, on his neck, he felt her hair… he felt it, yes, so soft, smooth, and baby skin, fresh roti, the wheat in their fields, the earth, the salt of the earth…. Freshly mown grass. Green, green freshly cut grass. Gunshots, twenty one of them- each piercing the still air- Mother, can you hear them, they’re sending their son to you, he’s joining you now, leaving me alone now, all alone, weary, lost, Mother, I am numb, hear me, hear me, what am I going to do now… they give me the flag, I feel it, it is heavy, Brother, I don’t want it, but the flames are high now, they burn hot, and they dance, she dances too, she dances in fiery red and orange, in my arms, she dances alone, she spins, she dances in white, she will marry tomorrow, he’s a rich man, good family, but will she dance like your fire, brother, there is now rain, rain, it fuels your pyre. How, I don’t know. I’m all alone now, always have been. The white of my clothes is drenched, soaked in rain, but your fire does not go out, you will not come back to life… I can’t feel too much now, the rain is stripping me of tears and leaving me hollow with an ache… oh this agonizing ache, this pain… mother, you sing, and my brother, he talks… oh, she laughs, so sweetly she laughs… I can hear nothing else… The visions are faster now. I smell grass… a flower… discontent, betrayal, and I taste… her lips, dal, salt…bitter, bitter blue pills, mother… blood…

The cloud slowly begins to dissolve, the fog fades as the green mist spins faster and faster. He himself spins faster and faster, the links on his soul breaking, shattering, flying into nothingness. The shadow is long, but getting shorter now. His senses shut down.

The last to go, a million, myriad colours of light in my head, in my eyes, visceral, blinding, revealing, realizing…this is where… heaven or hell, life or death, love or hate… body or soul… this, this light... nothing else, only light everywhere… no sensation, only light…. Then… only dark.