Hedgehogs

Athira Sadanand

Rain drowns me
In the stinkiness of a wet dog
Breathing it’s last beside me.

I sat in the muddy pool of warm blood,
Running my hands through the fresh touch-me-nots sprouting from the rain soaked Earth.
My fingertips spilled red beads.

He stared at me from a distance with a calm acceptance of
the dog dying between us.

In love, he and I are hedgehogs.
We stood away in fear of each other’s thorns.
Wounds burned beneath our wet skin.

When rain grew strong, whipping us hard on the eyes,
I transformed myself into a giant leech sucking silence,
And he stayed content as a stone hardened by seasons.

Words, like a tangled knot, got stuck in the needle hole,
Unable to merge two drifting continents.

And the dog died between us,
Spreading the stinkiness onto the cold fingers of rain.