Resigned to Fate Series:Knotted Noughts

i lost it all to three firm knots
and three days of endless rhyme
muttered over holy smoke
and heady feasts of sweet and rice.
and then i saw him, this man
i had never seen
or chanced upon in my brief life
all of ten, for until then
it was just me, happily
ensconced in my world.

yellow knots threaded
together by golden gods
weighed me down
with their whispered tones,
and engraved in my heart
the many rules of marital bliss,
that i must abide with,
that i must lie in servitude,
and if fail i did, in these acid tests,
then my story would be
a grave one to tell.

sometime later a new life took form,
first a still born, then cherubic twins,
another boy and a little girl,
i had without much ado.
‘and now’, they said
‘her life is patterned in’.

then one night, he came to bed
took away my golden thread,
and the gods and the vermillion.
in one brief moment it was gone.
now i surfaced in a tonsured head,
in rough white yards,
relegated to a secluded spot
within four walls.

the infant cursed for her arrival
at an ill-begotten time
was snuffed out with
the milk of baby pink flowers,
punished for her faultless crime.
the twins were sent faraway
the last i saw them,
i inhaled their milk and boy-like smells,
torn trousers and dimpled smiles.
they went without even saying goodbye.
i knew not their whereabouts,
but now, the lump in my throat
had dried my eye, numbed my mind.

Solace i found in the last cord
That had tied itself to my womb once.
a trivial compensation for the nought
my life had become.
i held him close.
too close perhaps,
for my claustrophobic love
must have scared him so,
he left me for some lusty affair,
with a woman much older ,
a city belle, with skin so fair,
i was told.

now, they said that it was i
that brought ill-luck. not my child.
so i sit here, grind poisoned seeds as i cry,
it doesn’t matter now, that death i face
for she has already come upon me,
and i can vouch that hers is a gentler race.

but when i will be forgotten,
and become a tale to exchange,
let it be known
that it was the yellow gods
that failed me,
not i, as they claim.