The darkness that Gandhari rears
fattens on the light it eats.
Memories of her belongings, recognized by touch,
hiss and strike at her heart, secretly.
Unable to endure their protests, she removes
her blindfold, and kisses them once
as if she were receiving the light.
Her husband asks her, at times, ‘What
are you doing by yourself, out there?’
The grasslands she once knew, lotus ponds,
river cruises,
are all restless, unable to sleep.
Sometimes she wakes up and loosens
the knots of dreams pressing down on her
and sets them free.
She says,
‘The rain falls forlornly on the palace gardens.’
She mistakes the decorative tassel falling
from the edge of her sari, for her husband.
One recurrent dream: A dagger slicing through
the flesh of darkness; the sun’s blood
spurting and falling.
One day she removes her blindfold and says:
I am talking to God.