A Naga in Love | Kavitha Rath

Lady amidst the rocks,
underwater companion of the river,
blue-green skinned and breathless,
she crouches forward.

She descends, a serene siren,  
winding in her trance-like dance
to touch a human life, break a heart,
consume another.

In the waters, icy and beholden,
the people traipse unaware,
The passengers and fisher folk miss her,
blended with the evergreen forest
and she retracts to her mossy home.

She steals a piece of you from the riverbed floor,
Her lips redden like peppers on a sun-baked terrace,
as she sells her elixir of immortality.

The promise dismissed in haste by most,
except for one would-be king,
who shaded her from the sun-glare
to stop the heat from melting her scales.

Serpentine she seems, every Saturday,
her secret exposed as she bathes in the tide pools.
Gliding on the stones, in solitude she sings.

Her lashes shut, and she’s on the go
in bird-like transformation, a missing link,
legs transforming  into a fishtail,
the crown tilting heavily against her head.

…………………………………x…………………………………………….x……………………………………………..

Kavitha Rath has lived in Atlanta, Chennai, and London, and is currently in Washington, DC. In the past, she received an honorable mention in Princeton’s Leonard L. Milberg ’53 High School Poetry Prize contest and recognition from the Georgia Poetry Society. Her poetry has appeared on New Asian Writing.