The rain cut me a river wide enough to savour my numbered gardens— each with their own cloud. And in each I bred a different flower— a single rose: blood red and bleeding passion meant for no one, it’s wrathful petals soaked in its own red; an orchid: for my altar and the long aisle I was never meant to walk or be waited for; and finally, the Tulips and peonies for the porcelain vases I had saved for years. You see, I’ve always known of a God in good things: Arete, Indalo or even Selene with her moon chariot across Nirvana. I knew of a God when I first laid my ears to Blower’s daughter by Damien Rice. I was alone in my room with the drapes closed. I knew then that God was there in that moment, and she had her eyes on me. My first encounter with God was on a grey Monday morning I was made to spend in an underground parking lot with ‘Delicate’ playing lazily on the music player. Outside, the leaden skies promised rain but I couldn’t see a drop of it. I was driven and insane, and so my raw faith wasn’t disrupted with God’s unwelcome presence. I dwelled on it for days, until I finally forgave my ordeal. Over time, the altar I was saving for my orchids had faded; the candle no longer burned, no one sang a hymn but I could still taste God on the tip of my tongue. Sweet, sometimes sour with redemption. It was almost as if, I could taste her faith in me when my faith in her became what I would call a contradiction. Someone had once promised me that my ardour would one day be served well.
And so it is, just like you said it would be, life goes easy on me, most of the time.
A solemn tribute to Damien Rice, and the restoration to the faith I was looking for for the longest time.
Snata Bose is an aspiring writer from Dhaka, Bangladesh. The idea of surrealism that she learned from the great Salvador Dali happens to be the very blatant theme of all her work. Her first published work entitled ‘Funeral’ was encouraged by a Dhaka-based literary magazine Monsoonletters and she was also seen amongst one of the first issues of the Young Observer. Snata is currently doing her A levels besides working on other things as well as poetry that she is hopeful about sharing with the world someday soon. Her belief traverses along a soulful perception that everyone is an artist in their own solitary manner and that the artist within her was born to paint not with colours but with words.
