ORIGAMI OF DESIRE

Beneath the overcast dome of this silver rain, 

Let us once veer into thy flooded lanes. 

While the thunder in the sky rings alive the hollow night,

drawing in your eyes a quivering terror; 

I close your soaked body in my embrace, 
and walk the trailing crease of lightning upon the drenched street.

You whisper in my ears, about our shelter down the alley;

our own private bite of luxury, beneath the slant of an uprooted hut. 

As the wind charms our heart open, blowing ajar the modest door, 

we step under it with locked palms, their folds matching, 

and at once, challenging fate with love.

Under the low roof of our love, I promise to gulp my worries,

licking the monsoon on your neck with my thirsty tongue.

I watch you drop your sodden clothes,

to a rippling pool around your fleshy feet.

The golden flame, brimming around the candle neck, 

casts our broken shadow behind,

as I sit back and watch them unite to a wet universe on the failing walls.

Together on the weathered mat, side by side, 

letting our warm breaths comfort our cold skin,

I smile at the death in your eyes.

"Flood" you whisper in your fading accent, snuggling at my touch. 

The starvation rising in hoots and cries,

surround us like a pregnant wave of suffering,

as the city wakes to a sudden cold sweat.

"So what?" I ramble in a dark dream, 

my lips pressed at your throat.

"With the next sun climbing up our limbs, 

we will be above this flood, sailing in a lifeboat,

rudderless, to where this devastation might takes us."

With that we fell quiet, bare and pressed in each other's arms,

surrounded by the noisy pelting of rain, 

the clamor of our own excited hearts,

and the scent of our kisses.

With that we let the flood rise through the night,

the river, deciphering death with every splash;

at ease, that it won't rise above our love.

With that we let our terror drown with the town,

sure that we are safe, protected in each other's eyes;

as every new bead of rain, a fresh lashing of wind,

broke a page of poetry from our past, to carve it into a lifeboat,

and placed it down the flood that rose beneath us.

Our love, a drenched origami of desire, thus, sails to distant shore,

and our souls forever untouched by calamities.

                                                                   © Sobhan Pramanik