I have dreams

of you in the mountains.

Meditating yourself into a

perfect state of bliss and oneness

with Shiva.

You as Shiva—because

you looked exactly like him when

you covered your forehead in the white

powders, lines proving your soul

was never mine,

you were never mine.

 

And now you’ve gone to the jungles

instead of the mountains, and a part

of me wants to find you there:

Imagines the big cats you last told me you saw

(your spirit animals),

I see your eyes meeting their eyes

within the rubber trees of Kerala.

 

You’ve gone wild

the way I wish I could go wild, too.

 

Would you have let me follow you there?

If I stayed, would we

have traversed the jungles together?

I wish.

 

I wish.

Sometimes, in my rewriting,

I return.

 

I slip towards you,

a striped orange shimmer,

between banana palms

and the sky.

We slink off together,

too busy feeling wild

to bother

reaching for the pen,

the insults,

the threats,

the leaving.

 

Because we would be leaving together,

both of us leaving the Lands of Rewriting,

the places where humans keep adding

to their own rules.

 

We would choose the jungles.

We would choose to be

Wild.  

*For those who are curious: this poem is about some of my experiences living in South India that inspired my first novel, MAKARA.  I’m working on some poetry right now that explores those memories and I’m thus far calling the series of poems Makara’s Roots or possibly The Rewriting.