Relapse by Ajanta Paul

 

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Relapse 

I want to fold back, to collapse 

and be carried upstream in my genes

to the sensuous sapience of innocent

infancy; to millennia ago when my cells 

were evolving in slow explosions

of change and metabolic mutations. 

I want to be an ancient fish

in turgid waters, coated 

with the slime of the ages,

the slippery patina of history 

colliding in atavistic awareness 

of life in its many forms. 

I want to return to being 

a foetus in the womb of time,

umbilically tied to the universe;

absorbing neonatal nutrients 

through a placenta that travelled

all the way from ether to embryo.

 

I wish to slide back in the scale

to a barely sentient species

navigating newly engendered feelings

in my endocrinal effusion 

as I gather into being 

over the slow centuries. 

I long to return to the condition 

of a stone, to burn and freeze

in extremes of weather, rocky

mountain fastness reflecting starlight 

that is thousands of years old

smelling of a long-dead source.

© Ajanta Paul

Ajanta Paul, Ph.D.

 Ajanta Paul, Ph.D., is a widely published poet, short story writer, and literary critic who was a former Principal of Women's Christian College, Kolkata. A Pushcart nominee, Ajanta has been published in journals including Capella Biannual Journal, Offcourse, The Statesman, The Wild Word, Atticus Review, and Spadina Literary Review. 

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