An experiment of prose
In her old bed, Solemna’s flesh still ached. She would not be free again until the morning, when she’d have to worry about his breakfast, and the ensuing silence. The silence of ash, of hard dry land that would need to be plowed soon.
But now he needed her for what any body could provide-warmth, resistance. His hands eroded her body, telling a lie. He grunted, telling a truth.
His flesh cascaded upon her, then collapsing motionless. As if resolution had been reached after all these years. She felt her own breath. She did not feel his. She knew he wouldn’t get up. She wiggled out from beneath his body.
In the mud, his flesh was still smoldering. The fire made the mud boil around his feet, made the riverbank come alive with hunger. She had cooked all of his food for twenty five years, and she would not be free without him, either. In another age, she thought, she would cast her living body into the flames alongside him. It had been done before, though she did not know whether it was done of love or duty. Some things she would do for duty: she will burn the red silk sari she had been married in. Some things she would do for love: she will climb a mountain alone to break her bangles at on the summit. An then she will be free of both.
She will never be free. Power is only absolute in absence; he will always have been.
He had said to her, once, “Heaven is a temporary punishment for good deeds accumulated. Merits exhausted, souls fall back to bodies like bodies falling to earth on the battlefield.”
That was twenty years ago, when he still talked in metaphor and knew it was only that. Now he was a fire built from a tree felled by his wife.
She could do all that she ever wanted to. She could do nothing. She would live nobly off of charity. She would go days on end eating nothing. She would never ask for food, but she would receive it, nonetheless.
No, she would not. She would continue to cook, because she already knew how.
She felt her own breath. She began to disrobe, unfolding the pleats of her red sari. She wore a white garment; never again would she adorn herself in color. She thought of Draupadi, whose virtue five husbands failed to protect, whose colorful sari defended her.
There is no blameless one. They both had committed evil, justified only by the perceived righteousness of her cause. And she had won.