Song of a fish in the Brahmaputra New Year’s Market

Brother,

Take my life now and be done with it,

Why must I wait for a thing of such certainty?

Yesterday, as I swam breast to breast with my lover,

We dreamt of things that were soon to be;

A cave of weeds, open un-curtained windows,

A library full of forgotten words and conversations,

To be remembered over a New Year’s cup of tea,

He sang to me,

The cave will soon stand tall, honouring our inside lives

The choicest weeds and strongest windows will hold us in place

Our library of forgetting will be stocked with the rarest books,

In our kitchens, to undo the locks on our mouths, the sharpest knives.

I said, brother,

Take my life now and be done with it,

Why must I wait for a thing of such certainty?

When I was born, my father named me for the fastest, strongest river,

The one that I lived in till yesterday; I was told to live up to my name,

But I was a creature of the dark, stammering and stuttering apologies,

There were locks on my mouth, as there were on my arms and legs,

And I was a fish who couldn’t swim, up to the day that my lover came.

I said, brother,

Take my life and be done with it,

Why must I wait for a thing of such certainty?

As I grew, the fish, elders and the hollow river plants began to tell

Stories of how the stammering fish from the river bed,

Could spin into place unlikely words, and form poesy out of the muck of life

From her pen would rise ghosts of the past to haunt toughened warriors,

But her own stories, in her trapped mouth, lay dead.

I said brother,

Take my life and be done with it,

Why must I wait for a thing of such certainty?

Yesterday, as I swam breast to breast with my lover,

He sang to me, pleading me to hand him the truth of my stories,

I thought for a while, I thought for a year and a decade and decided:

In the distance, the charming bait of the hungry fisherman’s rod beckoned,

The time had come to swallow whole, unopened locks and lost keys.

I said, brother, sell me, buy me,

I will make your New Year as promising as mine,

Take my life and be done with it,

Why must I wait for a thing of such certainty?