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Writer's pictureAishwarya Jayal

Body of a Storm

It’s raining today,

Moist air peppers the heat of an oft woebegone now.

Relief has many forms,

And one manifests in this raging storm.


She stands near her kitchen window,

In front of the fire of sustenance;

White milk,

slowly warms in the pot.


The wind is strangely persistent today,

It slides in to kill the fire it helped burn.

She tries to pull the window close;

While the water in the milk starts to effervesce.


And just as serendipity visits,

Light takes leave;

Leaving behind blue darkness outside,

And inside: Orange flames,

that try to resist their eventual death.


The darkness is absolute now,

Her milky white hands;

Can’t be seen in the vantablack of this storm.

Yet now two others take shape.


The window snaps open,

And she can feel the wind with two hands surround her;

It sweeps around her back in an insistent shove,

Hoarsely reaches out over her bare shoulders,

And tries to wrench her hands apart from her now shielded face.


She can feel its fingers poking through hers,

Trying to make space for its deposits of dust;

Painfully prodding, tugging at her hair,

For the wind has come to claim all that lies in its path.


A rustling sound grows steadily louder,

The sound of milk boiling over with anger.

And in the darkness, she tries to seek the orange;

That has now merged the fallen white into a burnt blackness.


The triumphant wind swoops in;

howling in the joy of a hunt that’s complete,

And far away, the neighbors awaken;

To the blind shrieks of the forever darkness.


Storms come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them - way too literally so. This prose is about a night in a storm, where the protagonist is seemingly safe within the confines of their home. But then, the structures we build are seldom foolproof aren't they?! A misconstrued calm can turn tumultuous in no time, a misconceived form can morph into a solid shape. Most of all - a misunderstood self could be more dangerous than that which is truly so. This strange stormy off-seasonal rainy weather is maybe the perfect season to explore the off-seasonal yet perennial rumbling within. Here’s to defenestrating the confusion and welcoming in the calm of truth :)


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