Soliloquy

To write a poem would have been an act of rebellion.
She rarely acted against herself these days, satiated
By the knowledge that such mutinies often brought.
Her ideas of the present overlapped with things
She did not want to linger past. The memories
Of her death would have excavated them anyway.

To think of pain was pain, too, and she was spared
The hurt that more well-meaning friends could have
Understood were they to walk the streets at night.
But, burdened by a summer that would leave little
In its wake save mangoes of an increasingly diluted
Kind and painfully acidic taste, they cowered.

It was not long before the flame-of-the-forest
Would shed all its inhibitions, would enhance
The taste at the roof of her mouth with feelings
Begotten perchance on a rainy afternoon.
To have rebelled against herself was no choice
She was comfortable making, nor capable of.

The rains would have brought an understanding
She would have been unable to glimpse. Tear
The walls around your heart down, she was often
Told, but to proclaim such feelings in the midst
Of strangers with whom she had only once swum
In the pools of Chiraan Fort, was rebellion too.

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