A narcissist’s orison encounters his unquenched yagna as a petal meeting its crepitating conclusion, or a man opening his compeer’s door. Father, Is it not the same dance of contortion That embodies involution of sendal latticework, And the act of suffering; Father, Show me disparity in wound and bliss— Father, Restrain the hand that reaches out to the mirror. Father, Grace the beast within me who reeks of youth With the senescence of this body. Father, Blind me, for these eyes see no more than mirages Even though you place your elixirs upon my palms.
A narcissist’s contrivance is seated upon the sill to witness multiplicity. Of feet that stride over it, their hues and shapes, the variance of angles and arches, who beckon a cosmos of their own. It learns of soles and toes, of the ornate prolusions to the hymn of physicality, and the foundations of the tabernacle of movement. But a narcissist’s contrivance waits with ephemeral eyes and an unrivalled camouflage. It drinks like no other thankless aridity, from the boundlessness of palms, hands whose grooves embody living for giving, digits who writhe to adumbrate numinosity, wrinkles whose estuaries are infinite youth. Yet a narcissist’s contrivance instills that it forgets— the ambits of the sill, the numbers of feet, the pirouettes rechristened to plummets, and the fingers mutilated. And then, a narcissist contrivance grants no empty-handed egress— it cloaks feet and flowers, hands a frame with a silver-less mirror, and sings sinuous averments of our blindness.
Vacuity is the cathedral of a narcissist’s citadel— whose limpid domes resonantly enrobe like onion scales a needless altar. Futility is the motif upon its pavements— its labyrinthine trails eschew mirrors who know too well of these involute disguises of its mordant teeth. Banality is the paint that never peels— flagrantly deployed upon its symmetrical edifices that line its streets as aphonic spectators. Ambiguity is the lithe dance of its cartography— whose ink is the anamnesis and anonyms of its lost travelers.
V.S. Rakenduvadhana is an Indian writer, poet, visual artist, and filmmaker based in Helsinki. Her diurnal energies are also devoted to her work as a neuroscientist. She has had a lifelong nocturnal affair with philosophy, music, and art in its many forms. Her works are now published/forthcoming in various literary magazines including In Parentheses, Camas, Rigorous, Amethyst Review and decomp Journal; while she works on her first novella. Website: www.rakenduvadhana.com
Grand Little Things 