Rohit Nalluri

I
know
someone
who dives the
deep for pearls.
He wakes up every
morning and stands at
the Edge, his long arms
folded over his chest, his
eyes glazed with a mother-
of-pearl sheen, the oily pink-
blue-red-green of determination.
He observes the waves, and knows
that the waves watch him too, watching
for any whiff of weakness. He prepares himself:
musters his muscles, tightens his tendons, lashes his
lungs. He has but one wholesome breath in which to reappear
with a pearl. That one breath is his entire arsenal against the livid sea,
the sea that watches him day in and day out steal pearls from wombs in her womb.

The wave-sawed sea sees the man dive-in and ‘this won’t do’, says the sea. She reeks
of the salt of vengeance, of weightlessness from the loss of all those pearls; she
seeks a sea-soaked soul in return for the rolled-ball of saliva men call
pearls. Foolish men: Don’ want what they need, don’ know what
they want. She lets him plunge in, engulfs him, smothers him,
swallows him whole, knowing that, the deeper the man dives
the more he’ll drown; knowing that the deeper the man
dives, the more he will drown; if not now then over
time, over days, over many dives, just once he’ll
dive too deep, just once his breast of
borrowed breath will burst, and
she will then rip open the
oyster of his heart
to swallow his
soul.

one
pearl
for another.