"Fractal Perfection" by Aparna Sanyal, Frequent Contributor & Poet of the Week

Fractal Perfection

Aparna Sanyal

A fractal face in a

fractal state;

the tremble of my lip matches 

moist eyelids. 

Bitten, the inside of my cheek

speaks

to oozing wounds that flow from my nose; 

raw sniffs that hold back 

salt.

Salt--that is the concrete of my shell,

that blessed tell,

of a whole, that is finally wrung out. 

Fractal geometry 

betrays my body with its symmetry--

I know not these unplanned surfeits--

how to stop one part, one curve, one angle from 

mirroring the other in cat-curling 

Fibonacci conceits. 

A riptide of orderly emotion, can it be? 

It creates another me-- 

prismatic, 

facet-twinned, the opposite of erratic. 

Each pore harks to the next, it’s mate, 

in grief’s fractally perfect state. 

Poet’s Notes:  There is a certain progression in pain. Having lived with Recurrent Depressive Disorder all my adult life, I have now learned to tell and even quantify the onset of symptoms. They happen in a systematic, geometric, almost Fibonacci sequence of perfection. The mental anguish is mirrored in double by the physical anxiety, and both add up with mathematical precision to a breaking down of the body’s reserves. Truly, there is a beautiful symmetry in even the most excruciating pain.