The Bleaching
©December 11th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
The years bleed your skin dry –
Translucency is all that’s left.
Lips once full of unconscious desire,
Are now wistful, remembering all.
Eyes that once invited everyone else’s,
Look inward, students of Time and Loss.
Hair, once boisterous, full of spring,
Now curl only in memory, straggle
Just a bit, mourning their lost bounce.
This is in the world of Sight.
In the world of Sound, something else:
Subsonic and ultrasonic fall behind,
You limp in the middle range, perhaps.
Music still makes you rejoice, or weep.
Voices make you vibrate in sympathy.
You hear more, sense more in the words
That fall like gentle rain or thunderstorms,
Echoing all around you, confusing meaning
With intent, with subtext, with tone.
And you study them, disquieted.
And your nose, more sensitive than before,
Speaks of the sweetness of sweet things,
The rich earthiness of earth things,
The sourness of disappointed things,
And the sickness of ailing things.
And your tongue, curled inside your red mouth
Still delights you with its own taste,
And reminds you that when all is gone,
You will still love the food you eat –
There is lust in your sense of taste.
In the world of touch, everything
Remains, full of exquisite, sensuous memory,
Full of the Now, as your neurons still thrill
And your skin, pale and thin, still trembles.
Your skin, sloughing itself off like a snake,
Still keeps its memories of when you were
Younger and awake, quickening to joy
To sensuous delight, to unaccustomed lust.
When all this is left behind, and you fly,
Will you mourn the loss of self?
Will you stick around the Living?
Will you ache to touch, be touched,
Or, will you dissolve into the air?
And will that air touch those who come
After, reminding them of something,
Filling them with inexplicable sorrow?
Will their senses absorb some of what
You once were, and vibrate in sympathy?
Or, will you walk, transparent now,
A being of air and light, deflecting light,
And not recognize what you see –
All the shadows that move blindly
Through the twilight of their lives?
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