Raksasi.

Rakṣasī

I noticed it first

in the way silence

developed a pulse.

Something unnamed

was breathing

inside my breathing.

A heat

not on the skin,

but behind a thought

that hadn’t risen.

A cold

not in the bones,

but in the echo

of a memory

I had never lived.

A hunger

but for the spaces

between meanings,

for the dust

that falls off a word

before the word forms.

Sometimes a colour arrived

a red that didn’t want to be red,

a green that resisted shape,

a black that refused

to stay in the dark.

I didn’t chase them.

They circled.

They watched.

They waited

for me to misname them.

I didn’t.

The body tilted

as if gravity had grown

another direction.

Thoughts folded inwards,

creased themselves

into unfamiliar maps.

Emotion loosened,

dripped off its own spine,

left stains

I could not recognise

as mine or Hers.

Something like desire

spilled into the room

but it had no object.

Only an aftertaste.

Something like anger

blinked once

and became clarity.

Then vanished.

Something like envy

pressed its forehead

against my silence

and dissolved

into a colorless ache.

None of it stayed.

None of it left.

A presence

slid beneath everything

not above,

not within,

not beyond

beneath.

The place

where meanings go

to molt.

There,

Her Rakṣasī smile

curved

like a question mark

without a question.

She did not devour anything.

She simply waited

for the shapes

of my shadows

to realize

they were already hers.

One by one

they unbuttoned themselves,

stepped out

of their own outlines,

and became

a texture of darkness

that felt

like remembering.

When I finally tried

to look for myself,

I found only

a faint indentation

as if something

had been sitting in my soul

for a very long time,

and had just stood up.

Nothing was broken.

Nothing was healed.

Everything

was rearranged.

This

was Her touch.

Or maybe

I was always

Her touch

trying to find

a body.