Summer Sans Sunflowers

Oh! What have you done you wretched girl
You couldn’t control your raging hormones and your womb you had to unfurl
To this aberration you dare to give a further whirl
By naming the abhorrent seed to be that of your father's?
Do you have no shame, you filthy, dark piece of shit?
That you think it worthy to bring on this hapless family more disgrace and spit
The man in question lounging nearby heard but never listened to his wife’s tirade
He didn’t have the courage to accept that his daughter’s trust he had betrayed
He knew his wife would not be able to understand why he had strayed
His mind drifted to that fateful night when it was pouring heavily
After a marathon session of drinking he had plodded back home wearily
No one was home except Amara, his daughter who was playacting
 She had worn her mother’s clothes, mimicking her mother’s tone she was chatting
He watched her from the door frame, in his drunken stupor he hallucinated his wife
Slowly he inched forward and clasped this woman tight
Vaguely he remembered this woman pleading with him to let her escape from his sight
Convinced his wife was acting coy, he feverishly held on to her with all his might
Greedily he inched forward to taste her elixir of life after years of lonely nights
For years his wife had pretended to be busy working as domestic maid in rich household
She loved the world of riches and abundance and returning home drove her blood cold
She had no compassion for her progeny of four, all dark, all ugly, all like slime mould
She could not bring herself to give into bodily pleasures in this matchbox of a house so old
Mechanically she did her homely duties and rushed to her pretty fair little charge
She liked to believe that rich household was her only place of solace in this world large
Amara vainly tried to gather her mother’s empathy
All she got in the name of maternal love was apathy
The entire neighbourhood saw her burgeoning stomach and blamed her for this travesty
Every day people turned their backs to her, even the children were forbidden to talk to her affably
The only people who welcomed Amara in their heart and home were the prostitutes three
Who lived at the end of her lane and considered themselves spirits free
They understood her fear, pain and dilemma and haplessly witnessed Amara lose her esprit
A fifteen year old innocent girl who was supposed to live free
Now was enmeshed and chained in torment due societal decree
Amara slowly and steadfastly lost her grip on sanity
She spent days planting sunflower seeds on a small patch of soil in front of her home, a shanty
She told the prostitutes, the sunflower would bloom the day she would see her baby dainty
The neighbourhood nor her absconding father or her mother cared for Amara during pregnancy
No one listened to her baby talk, for them it was pure profanity
Only one morning the neighbourhood discovered the still born baby
And the lifeless form of the new mother with the umbilical cord still attached to her body
Their faces radiated peace lying on the patch of soil that Amara had tilled in winter early
That summer, the sunflower seeds germinated on Amara’s patch of soil
But nature lamenting loss of two innocent lives from flowering recoiled
That summer no sunflower in that entire neighbourhood bloomed
The sunflowers in Amara’s pain and loss remained in their bud entombed.

Note: This poem is my humble tribute to Toni Morrison and her path breaking novel The Bluest Eye. The plight of the protagonist Pecola, has always moved me to the depths of my soul.
©Paromita Mukherjee Ojha, June 2015