Rohit Nalluri

After the fog
the woods were soft for a long time.
Spiky branches wrapped in cotton, burrs coated in fur
and sounds of the forest sheathed
in half a pound of silence.
The mist floated in and squeezed
all color, all light and sound,
and what at first glance looked like stealing
was in fact re-arranging,
the displacing of all essence
from all things.
We walked with wet noses
and beards draped in dew,
our shoes in the red mud squelching.

The grey void had siphoned all color,
leaving monochrome trees to be
dressed and
undressed
by the fog.
We walked up the bend of that melting mountain road, where,
in the clearing we saw dark clouds blowing past
like the tattered sails of ghost ships,
from where the whole, boiling, iron sky
looked like the home of gods, and where
our soles and souls were splattered in chocolate-blood 
by the red-soil-mud
of Kemmangundi hills. After the fog, the colors and light and sound
had bled into all corners of the canvas, into all things,
into each other.

Thunder cracked, and we yelled in excitement,
our shouts not carrying but dropping to the cold earth muffled,
our laughter like a sponge heavy with water
froze in the shape of our faces,
and friends moved ghost-like in and out of the mist.

Nothing we said that afternoon was louder than the mist.