An intense inward-looking poem that deals with hurt, by Lipsa, exclusively for Different Truths.

Perceived abandonment engendered a hurt.
So, I ran away into the neem thicket, generations old.
Senescent roots had long known transient undergrowth,
Moist grass and wild shrubs drinking neem rain
Which they mischievously rubbed on the raw rind of scarred legs
Mammoth droplets beaded wild black hair spasmodically stinging
Stark, brown neck and shoulders only a blood-stained
Side-slit, lace-detailed white camisole dress hemmed shrunken thighs.

From the far fringes the forest ghouls commenced an ominous hum
Faint at first, growing insidiously into a tumultuous clamor
Soon obnubilating the dreary copse in a dense fog,
Tumultuous clamor swelling to an enraged clangour,
A smouldering hellish-red glow circumscribing
All the while the perimeter of this gruesome atmosphere.

Drinking neem rain, bitter and cold, my exposed skin
By degrees degenerated and settled into numbness
Hurt cannonading from the inside losing power
In slow and incremental lacerations invisible to the outward eye
As the loam beneath my bare feet gave way to a familiar chasm.
Warped and endless time, twisted and ceaseless fears
Performed vile contortions on a weary and lifeless body
Till a scalding terrain red and cracked checked my fall,
After the frame fell the adornments, engulfing it entirely
Like a motley shroud vile and black, tattered beyond use.

The deranged and feverish ground, burning too torridly
For a lost little fragile girl’s vitiated flesh, I bestirred myself;
The burden frantically gathered, hastily tied up and swung,
Burgeoningly burdened on both feeble and shrunk shoulders
Scalded feet (getting more scalded with every new step) dart,
The barren terrain unfolding farther in every direction, pushing
The featureless horizon to greater remoteness, snarling.

The mad atmosphere coaxed at last a torrent of hot tears
From yearning eyes, dreamless now, though dreaming before
The shadows of past dreams projecting and vanishing
With restless rapidity. A numb stupor then; an oasis at last.

Falling stars over a pacified lake in the quiet of a nascent night
Called with siren-like allure the over-burdened soul
To drown in cool water the delirious black rags, sink with the weight
The groaning heaviness of memories, stories, desires, self –
As water flooded the lungs, stars faded from the cloudless sky
Darkness overran the view before my eyes to entire nothingness.
The smouldering neem thicket again, cold and bitter and wet through

Photo from the Internet