ON FIRE
I call Eli Eli repeatedly from morning till night, my phone’s auto-correct changes her name to Elijah and so, like Christ on crucifix, I call out her name, my last hope, calling my sister for having food, I hear my father’s feet missing the floor like magnetic repulsion, a rebellious act from the floor, a shout-out, no more tolerant, these flames burning our little glass house; the fire has been eating our bricks, one by one since long and we learnt to live around it tending to the burns, making us more of christians forgiving for a living, a vengeance in disguise, the fire initiated by alcohol and a spark from kitchen, sometimes it’s someone switching on the light to cover up the darkness forgetting that there has been a gas leak, ever since alive, I wonder who named it love, their marriage; Ah! No. No, I don’t expect a miracle, to magically change the wine to water and save our lives, maybe it will rain with thunder and hurricanes, sirens to rehabilitation centers; how we have locked ourselves in this four walls calling it a home, despite being nailed to this crucifix, it’s April the summer colors have tanned the bougainvilleas pinned to hanging pots decorating this broken home like roses on the Easter crucifix where Jesus forget to resurrect and slept on for years, maybe it will rain and the flames will stop eating us, before it consumes us whole, while alive like a pyre.
J George is a 26 year old writer from Pondicherry. Her poems have appeared or is forthcoming in several online and print journals, most recently in “TROU Lit Mag”, “Active Muse”, “The Martian Chronicles”,“FishfoodMag”, “Muse India”, “Madras Courier”, “Spark the Magazine”,”VerbalArt”, anthologies of “Boundless” (Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival 2019) and “Love, As We Know It” (Delhi Poetry Slam). Currently, she is pursuing her research at PondicherryUniversity.