Bayou Bed

by iravati iyer

Sound of the fan haunts me; inexplicable reminder of nights
pressed into each other, learning the
shapes our souls made as they morphed together, like a sound (I) never heard
from my mother’s lips, like the tinkle
of the your wind catcher as it wraps the breeze.

(I) sleep nude; heat strokes, like your hand, on my skin—blistering where it
was once warm. Would you have burned (me), given time?
Questions that have never escaped from the safety of the cage trapping them,
hidden in corners of my mind, where you didn’t look—
They make themselves known to the cold air and scrutiny of (my) ghosts; another impulse
clawing it’s way to the surface of my throat, then spat into the space you
no longer inhabit, then thrown into the night sky. As if the threadbare, fraying,
bloodied connections binding us (me) across worlds
could force you to answer them.

Your absence invokes desperation, as much as bravery, to look headlong,
clear-sighted, where you once made things foggy, stained. Dirtied and faded.
A fervent, misguided wish that it would be enough to
eclipse the pain, loss that beads to the surface at (my) my thoughts of you —

(i) I sleep nude, see,
because you would have loved it (me),
because when the fan is on, the image of you humming in tune to
it’s echo is inescapable, trapping me
with clawed hands and the imagined scent of you.

And when I wake, sweaty, squinting, I can almost pretend
we’re sharing the same bed.
~ lonely in a bayou bed.