Kaavya Butaney
not everything makes a
good story, my love.
we repeat the same lines,
traverse smooth palms one more time to
see if this was all fated (spoiler: it was),
we walk across the same canyons
and trip down dark alleyways,
bruce wayne always loses his parents
and odysseus always
returns to penelope.
the olives keeps growing,
the pits still sticky and hard.
the same tale told
through a thousand mouths becomes
folklore and loses the kernels,
ophelia’s body drifts downstream,
and sita walks across the fire one more time.
the ages etch it out in new ink and handwriting,
but mirabai never lies on feathers instead of nails
and i don’t believe that ganesha can be
just a boy and not a father’s first sin.
the red threads knotted us
tightly together and you can’t cut them, even if you
are begged shiva for a boon.
the story plays out as it always does, the epic transcends time:
muhammad finds god, water turns to wine, and siddhartha
loses faith.
go to the oracle, go to the
fortuneteller, go to the broken animatronic
left in the amusement park who spits out one last prediction,
it all ends well
and go the fortune cookies and the tea stains and the stars,
reciting a thousand versions of the same falsehoods.
the story runs the same course, no matter
the boat you take.
the happy ending exists only in parts — sita escapes damnation
only to crumble into earth when her people protest. et tu, brutus?
caesar cries, history crystallizing as the knife slips out.
you try to tell a new story, but it’s the same tall tale over and over,
and we deny insanity. achilles is dipped into the styx and
rama folds into godlier fabric.
you say the same story in a thousand different ways
and expect the threads
to make a more beautiful tapestry, but the mahabharata
cannot be made into a lovelier fable. you cannot
absolve, cannot recant or recast.
draupadi is undraped, krishna
rationalizes patricide, duryodhana’s blood
washes away the shame,
and the most intricate sanskrit does not make the blood-soaked kurukshetra
anything other than a graveyard and no retelling
can make this story a romance.
not everything makes a good story,
because men always say the same thing
and i really can’t believe them anymore.
because i follow the footsteps of a thousand
women who tear at the seams.
because kavya is epic poetry and
i am just the preface to a greater myth.
because you woke up and you are still
in bed with the nostalgia of a bitter regret.
because the ending is already written —
kal is yesterday and tomorrow.
Kaavya Butaney is a second year studying journalism, biology and (sometimes) Asian American studies. She is an editor on nuAZN, a student researcher, and a caffeine addict.
