Basement

The wind seemed to have picked up…
Perhaps because your breath became a part of it…
The tree leaves thumped hard…
And I, a structure of bones and flesh, stood silently…
As if my being had stepped out of my body…
I looked out to the street…
You were passing by…
Many people pass by, but not like you…
You were strolling as if your feet were conversing with the street…
Don’t know what they said to it that the street seemed to blush…
I looked that way intently for days…
And then I saw…
You were standing underneath that tree outside…
The tree had husk in it for the first time…that’s what the tree thought…
I was fixated at that husked-tree for days…
One very hot afternoon…
You stood by the outer door as if you are asking the door if it knew the way to a water-well…
Taken aback, the door first looked at you, then at me. There were water-containers inside the house…
You looked at them and the water-containers suddenly became alive.
I filled a bowl with water from one of the containers. You came in and drank the water quietly.
Don’t know where you came from and where you went afterwards. I only knew that my house was in your way, and you were always thirsty whenever you passed it. I’d put a bowl of water in front of you.
“My name is Uranus,” you said one day before taking a sip.
“My name is Gaaya,” I said softly, taking the empty bowl back from you.
I felt as if the bowl always had water in it before you came…and it was dried empty when you left…dry as your throat…maybe even more…
Me…I’m a three-storied structure…
You saw the first story, not the second one. One day, after finishing your water, you looked at the stairs of the second story.
Not only thirsty, perhaps you were hungry as well. Seemed as if you discovered the second story was needed to be conquered. When you looked at the stairs, I looked that way, too.
And when you put your hand on the wall next to the stairs, I felt my ribs quiver.
Up the stairs there is a vine-covered eaves and a bedroom.
You stood under the eaves as I lit up the wood in the hearth…began to warm-up that cold cotton…
Oh, my God! Your face was hot as if it was on fire…
The burning wood in the hearth crackled, throwing a few sparkles down my feet.
My hands were trembling putting that warm bread in front of you…
I saw that your fingers were also trembling trying to break a piece off that bread.
I hid my quiver from you, but you kept looking at me as if you were searching for it, unaware that inside quivers cannot be seen.
You hugged me, and your quiver met mine…
The fire in the hearth was burning bright bouncing the heat off our faces.
The three-storied structure has a basement…no one can see it, but it’s there.
And when you left that night, I took that twentieth year of mine and put it in that basement. I thought I’d show it to you when you’d want to see it. It was yours…
The sound…like a straight line…would start from the depth of my chest and come out of my throat, ending softly…u-r-a-n-u-s….
The sound that would come out of my chest and whisper in my ears…
Inside me…there’s a place…on the left…where a fire burns…that melted that sound…the soothing sound that traveled in my chest like a straight line…traveled from my chest to my tongue, quietly…u-r-a-n-u-s…
Day and night went round in a circle…just like that sound…
You came one day…after so long…but showed up you did…you did not have the excitement of the first story, nor of the second one…you went straight to the third story…where…quiet and frozen…I was waiting…as if hundreds of books were waiting…
You stood quietly…I felt as if another book is added to my collection…I touched your hand gently as if I’m touching a book for the first time…
You laughed …as if your eyes had absorbed all those pages of that book…and your lips all those words…and then you kissed my lips as if I needed to read those words from your lips…
Just as you took very ordinary steps to the first story, you very ordinarily walked down to the middle story holding my hand, passing the eaves, right into the bedroom…you kept moving your feet on the velvet bedspread…those empty, long days left behind…couldn’t tell what the future held…but the present moment was there…as far as the eye could see…the moment was there…
There was a wall of flesh around you before that moment, and one also around me…you met me as if…as if…water meets a stream…the swans glided in the pond.
When a pond dries up all left is dust…I felt like a pond full of water when you were with me…that dried up when you left…nothing but dust…a lifeless idol of flesh…
That night…and every night…I felt as if someone is crying inside my womb…
Then you forgot to come my way…and one night…when the crying sound inside my womb won’t letup…I put that crying sound along with my womb in the basement where I had once put my twentieth year.
Whenever I went down the basement holding a lighted-candle, I’d look at my twentieth year…and I’d hear that crying sound inside my womb…and would think that, when you come, I’d take you down the basement holding your hand…
Many years later when you showed up at my door, you weren’t alone…you had work…standing outside the door, you had too many things to do…you quickly drank a bowl of water…and when I pointed towards the basement, you promised that you’ll be back.
I did not hold your promise like a flower, but sowed it on my palm as if it were one. That flower blossomed for many years on that palm of mine…
But a palm is just a flesh that does not stay young like a fertile soil. Time wrinkles it...corrugates it. And when it starts to get barren, all that was once lively and vivacious wilts. So did the flower of your promise. And with that quivering palm, I put the wilted flower of your promise in that deep-dark basement.
The third story has many books…has histories from all over the world. But it lacks one book. It has no history book of my basement.
Those who have read the history of the world know that, thousands of years ago, there was this man named Uranus and a woman named Gaaya, and that whenever Gaaya gave birth to a child, Uranus would bury that child in a basement, and that Gaaya would hear those crying sounds from underneath the earth.
But no one knows this story, that in the twentieth century also, there was a Gaaya who once loved someone named Uranus, that Gaaya put her womb in a basement from where she always heard a crying sound. No one knows that crying is not only for the newborn, nor that a crying sound is not only heard from a newborn.