Master and Piece

By Shweta Ravi

 

It was to anirresistible platter
Of anxiety, bewilderment and loneliness,
Sprawled on the unstable table of my salad days
That it invited itself, then insisted on remaining
An unsettling settlement. Called Fear.

 

It crawled from outside in and gnawed me inside out
A stagnating secret of mine, I its Frankenstein.
While fear was a work in progress,
I, a haunted armchair, rocking yet dismantled.

 

My fear wasn’t growing less, fear was growing fearless,
On a possessed night, its agility against my fragility
Like a huge python, winding round and round,
It spiraled out of our hollow pit to choke my sense.

 

It saw my face, I saw it faceless and at once
A voice stung my silence, a vent clung to my screams,
If the strength of the strangle is not the python itself,
The madness of a story is not the storyteller herself,
My fear is not me, it is in me, all over me,
My master my piece, I let it grow at ease,
Piggybacking him up till its peak
To yank by the neck and throw it from the top.

 

Now it lies buried deep, my master now in my service.
I recall it just enough to keep my thoughts ignited.
Forget just enough to keep my heart from wrenching.

 

Shweta Ravi is an English teacher who loves to weave words to make something fascinating happen on paper. She has contributed articles to magazines like Teacher's Plus. She attempts to string together children's tales with ecological truths and wonders.