Jan 16, 2015 Original Poetry
Air and You, and I
©January 16th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
A bird flies
An arrow in the air
Shot from a twanging earth
Into an indifferent sky,
Exulting in flight.
Slicing the air,
Smiting the blue,
It flies, heedless of
Its effect on me, the Watcher,
Its wings flap, unsteady,
And then even out
Steady as sails in the wind
On an ocean that calls me,
But still terrifies.
And the air which turns to wind
Descends and snakes around my skin.
The same air the bird sliced in two
Touches me,
And then, you.
So, we stand, in different lands,
Our skin tingling with mystery,
Linked by a bird which
Slices the air,
Displaces it,
Spills it, and moves on.
Will we, if we meet,
Know each other?
Will we, when we meet,
Say, It was you to each other?
Will we shake hands
Or fight?
Will we hug each other,
Or smite first?
All this air, going round and round
And round and round,
And round and round,
An endlessly rotating earth
Has touched you, and you
And you, and you.
We breathe in each other’s air,
Our ancestors’ air.
We sigh out air and cry out air.
We sing air, and bring air,
We plummet in air,
Climb summits in air.
We eat bursts of air
In water, when we drown,
And heat air when
Our planes rise up.
You are my brother, my sister,
My father, my mother,
My friend, my lover,
My self, my other.
Why such strife,
Then?
Come, let us share
This lovely air.
And this bird, winging back down,
Come, bird, alight on my arm,
Thank you for spilling
All this beautiful, sunlit
Song-lit, space-lit
Air!
Thank you for letting me dream
Thank you for that song that streams
Down, and down, around us.
Thank you for rising up
And winging
And singing
And wheeling
And reeling in
All this air!
For today, I was sad.
And I didn’t see you,
Not exactly.
I just made you appear
In my head, and there you were,
Real, solidly soaring
Slicing into the air.
And you brought me relief
And you brought me peace
And you made me cut the knot
That held me down.
I know there are more knots.
But right now, breathing
In and out, quietly,
Surrounded by voices
Ephemeral as you,
I imagine you, O Bird,
And you, O Person,
On the shores of
A faraway land,
Smiling at the sun,
Breathing our air.
And around me,
On me, from feet
To head,
The air tingles
On the skin
I’m in, floating
In a bubble of air
In the emptiness
Of space.
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Tags: #Connectedness, #Original Poetry by Vijaya Sundaram, Air and You, and I
Jan 16, 2015 Original Short Stories
Stat
PHOTO PROMPT – Copyright – Jan Wayne Fields
Giving Thanks
©January 16th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Genre: Realistic, depressing fiction
Word Count: 100 words
It’s Thanksgiving.
I’ve set the table. There’s no one here — just me. My father vanished six months ago. My mother was diagnosed with Stage IV stomach cancer after that. She died last month. My sister, eighteen years old, eloped with her young, handsome college professor after that. He was fired. They moved to Montana.
Standing by the window, I’m blank as new-fallen snow. There isn’t any snow, though.
I bring the food out — mashed potatoes, canned soup, bread, butter.
I sit down, raise an empty glass to an empty room.
“To my family,” I whisper, and begin laughing uncontrollably.
Tags: #Friday Fictioneers, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, Thanksgiving, Vijaya Sundaram's Flash Fiction