It would mean, then, looking out of the window
And finding that white sheet of snow,
Robust as the nation’s promise, pressed against the panes,
Hot body silverly glowing, eyes upturned
Towards the studio ceiling,
Floods of light washing down its limbs,
Blue veins bursting from white palms,
A dangling mess of white hair and frozen testicles,
Nude as a statue upped and gone from the middle of a square.
Were this to turn up at the window, then,
Dollar-bill pinned firmly to frozen fingertip
Asking permission to view, after all, death and long tube-lit nights,
The flashlights going crazy, after all, around a body no longer sexual
A body dangling from one faint thread,
A body only death
And the paraphernalia of infinite postponement,
Hiccups, deferral,
Vomiting, delay,
What, then, would suffice as price or explanation?
Not the reason but the ritual of it?
The repetition and running and the waking and the repetition?
Showing with pointed finger, then,
The screen behind the pale cardboard set,
The television just beyond the foot of the iron cot,
Reruns all night long, the changing of sheets with
Every interrupted sleep, the inevitable removal of blood and stains
While you wait - bare-feet and childlike - made-to-order, against a white screen,
Cold as the frost you can view; grazing fevered skin and hot palm,
And this, your character; and this, the only love you may play tonight.
Copyright: Trina Nileena Banerjee, 2009
