coughing.
unwilling to cover my
face, though i’m
breathing in someone.
it somehow seems disrespectful
to cover the
holes through which
i breathe, as the
smoke of the
dead surrounds
me.
i’ve been here.
when you were
breathing.
five years ago.
watching a fire
burn for the
first time,
we covered our
noses, our mouths,
not knowing what
to do.
instead of watching,
we found ourselves
retreating.
then two years
later, just me
here again, still
unable to feel,
yet seated,
unmoving for hours,
for reasons i
didn’t yet understand,
the fires they
burned around me,
and i,
i tried not
to breathe.
and now.
five years later.
i watch the fires,
and the clouds
that rise from them,
and i see the
families tending
to the fires they
themselves set.
i stand here,
today,
watching those fires,
different fires
than those i watched
five and two.
different, because this
time, i
breathe them
in.
and now, seated,
unmoved, i watch
it, from the beginning
to end.
this time on
the royal ghat,
this man,
no commoner.
the crowd huge,
yet there’s no
one around me.
the wood stacked
four high,
covered in
garlands of gold
and orange,
the body on a stretcher
held high above
the pyre, spun
clockwise six, or
was it nine times?
(somehow i lost count).
the body, wrapped in
white, now on top
of the wood,
his socks removed,
thrown into
the river below.
his face now
revealed, bottled
water poured into
the hands of the crowd,
then dripped
upon him.
he wears the hat,
the hat that i wore
five years ago,
when we were
here for that
other reason.
a handful of straw
now lit, a man
circles the body,
lighting.
wood below, now
wood on top,
sticks, logs placed
there by the family
and friends.
pyre now lit,
the crowd
disperses, and the
man, now
completely covered
in straw.
a man, apparently
uncommon in his life,
he is now
no different than
all of the dead;
an object in
need of disposal.
the smoke, it billows
toward me,
as more straw
is added to
the pyre,
a man with
a stick,
the man tending the
fire, uses that
stick to push
the dead man’s foot
back into the flames.
i wonder where
madeline is,
and if she knows.
much time
passes, but how much
i don’t know,
madeline is
awake and now in
my arms,
and we watch,
watch the smoke
and flames,
and now,
ash.
standing now, here,
watching,
still unable to
move.
and now i think
of you, and remember
how we
reacted to this
five years ago,
and i look at
the non-hindus,
the non-buddhists
standing around us,
wearing the same look
we all wore
then,
eyes clenched,
trying not
to breathe,
disturbed not by
the smoke
or the body burning
before them,
but by their
own mortality.
and i remember
that day,
when i had
to make the hardest
decision of
my life,
and even now
i wonder if
i made the right one.
but this.
this is not
a reminder,
for we all know
we will die,
but this,
this place, this,
the death of the
man before me,
and the next body
being prepared
up river,
and all of those
burning down river,
they are an affirmation,
one of the
reasons that we can
carry on…
we
breathe him
in, breathe them in,
and now.
we breathe
you in.
