Ramayana Revisited

The television seeps through the wall
like yet another nightmare.
Somebody’s crying as usual, tomato ketchup
oozing past a knife. And here, something else
coagulates beneath my eyelash.

Nothing they taught me in the chemistry lab
prepared me for the iodine gas
raging purple as a sin in my gut,
some awful cure for a wound
that turned to air.
Sita, garish as a myth,
lacerates me as she wails
on the screen.

So much motion
trapped in a drawing room
cabinet. I rock on the chair,
remain exactly where I am,
see Sita get carried away
by the demon. Then,
it is time for lunch.

Later, the news comes on.
The child, emaciated, is no longer
even a headline. The reader turns
to the latest cricket score.

A bomb explodes inside my womb,
but I survive till Sunday comes again,
time for Sita to creep
back through the wall.

I slide the week behind me like grime,
or rather, like a snake sheds its skin,
swallow my past like a rabbit,
whole, undigested, and it shows
somewhere in the middle of my coil.

I want to stick my fangs into Sita,
but she vanishes just as I strike