“You!”

A flame caught on the firewood. Sparks flew from its tip and landed on the floor.

“Damn you!”

Just then, in another home, water drops from a jug’s narrow spout splashed to the ground. That same moment, at a far distance, on the same spatial line where the water hit the floor, the earth trembled.

In the middle of nowhere, the leaves of a fig tree rustled.

“I, your mother, curse you; I rue the day I gave birth to you!”

Someone, somewhere, in the middle of his nightmare, felt his moaning turn into a fear-filled laughter that spilled around him like shards of glass. The sky trembled.

“I curse you! You shall never sire a son!”

“Oho! A chaste woman’s curse! What if I did father one?”

“He will not live long; like a snake that licks its own egg, your poison will kill him!”

At that moment, of its own accord, her rage slapped at the earth, and from the dust that rose, in the burning heart’s pearl blister, in the boiling blood, in the sweat that her body spat out, a white-hot breath escaped the shackles of her lungs’ unhinged branches.

In the promise of a single vocal note,

In the shape cut by her tongue,

From the proof of the universe’s existence,

Within the limits of the word, the destiny seeded by its meaning gave me life,

Its state became my consciousness,

I, the curse,

Squeezed myself out.

From the breath of life that rang through my being rose the sound of Om reverberating around me…

As I brooked the vibrations and emerged from the body of sound that protected me, my first and foremost realization was the ugliness of my form. Fever blazed through me.

I looked around, waking up from the miracle of my birth.

The white hair cascaded like the redounding foamy waves, the face with hollow cheeks and large eyes swimming with tears, the fire burning bright in them. In the shadows of such brightness, I looked at my birth mother’s visage and instantly noticed the wrath on it.

My formless body paid homage to this transfer of emotion by shrinking into itself.

The form of my oppression is the expression of being oppressed.

?

The hook curved, and my consciousness hung on it, writhing.

? Who am I?

The question is the answer; the answer is the question; the question arising from the answer, the answer arising because of the question; what do the question and the answer signify? This, or that? No.

Neither this, nor that. The other one is also not the answer, no, no, none of these are.

Then what is it? Which one?

The negation, the question, and the answer took turns swirling in confusion in this outburst.

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

?????????????????………………

Infinite electrical question marks jumped out like flying fish while I joined them as a ?

Gasping, listless.

The question nags for an answer.

I, the word.

Do I have a gender?

Am I a she? He? It?

“You will never sire a son! He will never live to see a day!”

This curse becoming a reality is my fate; it is my state; I am the curse.

*

I rose as the cursed promise from the never-ending ocean of cosmic vibration churned by her wrath; I do not take any physical form other than the meaning that was given. I am the body of truth, ungoverned by time or rules. I am the promise of the uttered word.

I will wait till my time comes.

I will not be bound by a place. I will be omnipresent.

I will not be shackled into a form. All forms are my form, my characteristic.

I am word:

I am word’s meaning.

I am meaning’s action.

All three functioning together

A trident.