"You, who opened suns in my heart,"
-Alfonsina Storni,
tr. by David Masse
from Mask and Clover:
Poems; the siren
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I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, raw guttural sounds echoing through the entirety of my being. I clutch my throat trying to stop these awful, treacherous sounds yet they escape me.
Fresh, hot tears pour down my eyes setting in the hollow of my neck.
It started like a dream, but I should have known it was too good to be true. I was dreaming of my sons, and I watched them get murdered that ill-fated night, I couldn't do a single thing. I couldn't even wake up. The sound of my sons screams still echo and I scream again.
The door suddenly opens and I sit up quickly clutching at my knees.
I hold onto my saree and for a minute I think, that monster Asswathama has come and he's here to finish me off. End me.
But then I watch Bheema enter so gently, closing the door behind him, ever so faintly. He lights the candles next to the bed.
He sits next to me, and the bed dips ever so lightly.
He doesn't say a word just takes my hand in his and rub it, warming it in his large ones and takes it to his lips pressing a kiss to them.
That's all it takes for me to throw my arms around him, my Bheema, and sob. He runs a hand soothingly up and down my spine, tracing the ridges.
He waits until I calm down completely.
He doesn't speak a single word, doesn't ask me anything he just holds me. Ever so gently, as if I were ash and breathing too hard would scatter me.
I calm down and I pull myself away from him. "Sleep" he says and I lie down.
He tucks me in and I want to say something. I love you. Thankyou. Something. Anything.
But I can't.
I fall into nothingness and Nithra devi catches me in her arms.
*****
I wake up again later in the night hand reaching for water.
I look up and find Bheema, awake looking at me. The realisation hits me, he hasn't slept all night.
He takes the water and hands it to me, as I sit up.
I drink the water and then ask him, sitting in a swan position "Why aren't you asleep?"
He just shakes his head. "I didn't want a nightmare to take hold of you again." he says.
Tears fill my eyes at the thought of his tenderness.
Suddenly I am thrown back in time, almost forcefully.
One day Bheema had seated me and cooked me food with his own hands.
I had told him that it should be the other way around and I, his wife should be cooking for him.
He'd just laughed and said "Well, I married a queen. And my queen deserves to rest and taste this food."
"Still.." I had protested and he had shut me up by feeding me a mouth of this sweet, so good it felt like amirtham.
"Kalyani, I never would want too see you straining yourself for me. I want to cook for you and feed you with my own hands my entire life." he said and I had no words.
Bheema, I think, loved me. Loved me with the whole of his heart, With everything in him.
"Kalyani," he says now, breaking out of my thoughts and I ask him "Did you love me, truly. Do you?"
And he laughs as if it was a simple question "My heart, I yearn to see you smile, I ache to hear your voice, I dream of you. No word has ever sounded so tender on my mouth as yours. I would kill myself to love you. Wreck myself to love you. Ruin myself to love you. I would break open my ribcages and rip my heart and serve it to you on golden platter if you asked me. Loving you has not made me gentle, dear, loving you was the most violent act of all. I love you. I love you Kalyani. "
"Bheema," I start and he places his finger on my mouth.
"I don't need your words. I don't need anything to love you." he says and love, warm and true fills every cell of my being.
I realise I have never known love like this. True and pure. As if all the love I knew before this wasn't love and this alone is love.
You are the only one who loved me I think.
"I will walk beside you tomorrow," I say quietly "Until the mountains end. Until the air itself refuses to carry us."
He smiles "And then?" he asks.
"Then," I say, with the ghost of a smile, "we'll die one last time."
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Ficción histórica--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dharma was the cloth I held closest. I was draped in dharma. No one could ever take that from me. No amount of pu...
