Romancing the Pyre

I saw a pyre burning. The show seemed to be very unpopular. I got the box seat and the best view in the many dimensional screen. 15 feet right under my nose were remains of 2 lives that had just ended. I was scared to see this through but my feet froze and so did my eyes. The one that caught my eye seemed to be a man in his 30s. Healthy and tall, unattached. The body bathed in river and set on the final flame within minutes. No one weeping, no one watching but me. I saw the skin of his face burn up to show the white flesh. The fire caught up fast and devoured half the face to show the skull.

It was like a tug at my rope with the weight thrown into a deep gorge with silence. The damp paper with the blotting ink that strides through the unsure hands. The unsure full stops that get dragged through half the page to only begin writing again. The sentence thats far from its end to mean anything. Like enduring pain to just get this warm heavy lid vision of the world through the eyes that keep blurring. The morning light creating pearls in the lashes.

The attendant seemed to be in hurry. With a long stick he moved the fire. With futility he covered his face with a cloth to ensured no dead remains enter his system. The queue of more bodies seemed to tell him to hurry. With a jolt he stuck a log in through the charring hip bone and upper body stood up as if in anger at being waken. My view became better. I didn’t bother to cover my face nor bat a lid. The spine gave away his height. He must have been at least 5’11”. I’m good with proportion understandings. All tendons and ligaments starting to break with crackling sounds. Tucked back into his bed, the stroking continued like a lullaby till he slept. Bit by bit, layer on layer he kept rising in ash. Becoming a part of me with awareness and of others without their knowledge or acknowledgement, we all got a fair share. Onward he went with maybe open sentences left behind.

I have experienced tiny deaths in pauses and in endings – mine or others’. Like deaths that no one else mourns. heavy burdensome deaths that only I light the pyres of. Its neither morning, nor beautiful. But seeing this was bizarre. Every face I looked henceforth, the confusion seemed to dissolve.

This final pyre is where we all belong – you and me, mine & yours. It left me empty but not in a desolate way. I witnessed the only thing definite in my knowledge. It left me light and numb like the dance of the dreams of the waking eyes. While I act like I’m writing the story, secretly I know I’m the one being written. Like the 5’11” tall man, whose full stop I became an audience to and who walks around in me.