Umbilicus
©July 25th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
I felt alone today,
Not lonely.
Just singular.
Some days call for chatter,
And others for introspection.
Some days, I am mute –
Not from sadness,
Nor from despair,
Just from a need to keep my mouth closed,
And taste my own tongue.
It’s delicate, my tongue, reminding me
I am a creature of flesh,
And makes me forget
All the weight of thought –
Of forethought and after-thought.
Thought is heavy, even light-as-clouds thought
And I like the mooring of flesh to bones,
The feel of a planet tilting away from me
As I plant my feet on the ground,
The taste of grass in my ah!-nostrils.
But mostly, I just felt silent
All day, today,
Until now.
And I am silent, still, as
I taste my tongue
Folded like a lotus within
The quiet cavern of my mouth,
Unwilling to speak,
Alone, singular, and now,
Lonely – perhaps.
Maybe, it’s the word itself
That pulls me like an umbilicus:
Lonely.
So deep blue, so bottomless,
So beyond the power of language to translate.
I pull on the cord, and climb upwards,
Twining around it, in a humming womb
Waiting to be born.
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