Gone Lawn
a journal of literature
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Gone Lawn 5
Autumn, 2011

Featured drawing Distort, by David Rosen.

Featured Excerpt

New Works


Aishwarya Jain

Love


I have love. Will you let me spend it on you? So much love is bubbling from my tub full of hot water. It does not die. It remains like the dull thud of a construction site that never ceases to tune your dreams. My dreams.

My dreams are a movie I watch for my soul's pleasure; but never live them. Can we do a theater act together? A live performance before an audience — to end with the shedding of our beautiful costumes? Can I dream of that?

My character will fit the stereotype that complements you. Only give me a window to fan the bruises this love inside me inflicts. The window will not look out at the magical lake reflecting aging mountains, like in my movies. Nor even a curved driveway with gorgeous bushes as in my plays. It can be a landscape of cowboy horses, if you wear the hat; or holy campaigns, if you be my brave crusader. It's your wood, your glass, your paint; and I, only the shadow standing at the drapes, lost in reverie.

Why do I have something I cannot give?

Will it not breathe unless I give it?

Is the water going to break, doctor?

I will deliver puppets if you don't want the bone; my dilated cervix will not listen to your reins anymore. The world that had enough air for everyone's breath is dead. Where is the world that had enough space for everyone's gifts? Am I, like you, to keep mine with me and run 9 to 5, reveling in my bit for productivity?

Sweet, gentle, burning, dying. You won't take it; not even your wanted, selected frames of the fragments of my whole. How can I give life to the love accursed to me? It wasn't my turn to conceive. It is my turn to perish within me . . . until you come asking for a caress from dead eyes.


Aishwarya Jain is a young writer from India, and an eternal student of Art.