I licked Roquentin’s nausea

Samiksha Tulika Ransom

 

Before I am out of bed somebody has already pasted

a stale yellow morning on the glass of my window

and a eucalyptus that tries hard to stand straight and colossal

but erupts when the wind punches its gut

 

The scent of its leaves mixes with petrol

makes for an unhealthy civilization

an omniscient question

that nobody knows the answer to

 

Absurdity swims in the air with cotton seeds

settles on the freckles on my cheeks

while Roquentin’s nausea hammers me in the stomach

and unease finds me laying back in bed

staring at the concentric circles on the ceiling

hoping for the clouds to come down in a flash

and neutralize all my wars like the atomic bomb.

 

When the funeral-city is over

I will flood the air like geosmin

I will infest the earth like brine.

 

Note:

Reference is made to Antoine Roquentin who is the protagonist in Jean Paul Sartre’s modernist-existential novel titled, Nausea.