My heart is a gilded oligarch

My heart is an oligarch:

A staunch, pot-bellied, knuckle-cracking middle-aged man lounging carelessly, lazily  in his sitting room with his limbs spread out on a settee

before a tall, gilded mirror.

Disfigured and discolored from the hours inside his great house, away from even a single taste of the sun,

he pops a ripe grape into his small mouth and carefully follows the droplet of juice snaking its way down his chin with his yellowed eyes; but he—

he feels no urge to wipe the stain of purple away.

In fact, he feels no sense of urgency at all

even though

the grandeur of the mirror, of the mansion, of his weighty clothes

are on fire.

The fire is a strange shade of gold but not the kind you'd imagine to see behind your eyelids when you look directly at the blazing sun.

It's the gold that the oligarch might see reflected off of the rows and rows of wheat planted outside his window should he choose to look—

it's the gold that he might notice coating the edges of his great looking-glass should he allow himself to notice.

But his eyes don't deign to fall upon the flames

which have consumed the orderly rows of wheat and ingested the golden-hued serfs and are

inching their way

towards his silk-covered toes. No,

he stares

only at his withered countenance, and at the purple droplet which itself is now standing still and

waiting for the fire.

I wonder why he can't feel the heat: it must be suffocating him by now, right? I mean,

the flames have reached the top of the mirror and are licking away at the fleeced edges of his tights and the gold is disintegrating and dazzling teardrops are

on the face in the mirror, distorting it, carrying its features away in a stream down the length of the glass until the only discernible part about it are the

two yellowed eyes,

looking, unflinching and unbothered, into themselves with dispassion.

The oligarch waits until the eyes are

captured, roped into the gold, and the droplet on his chin has evaporated into the crowded air

before

looking down at the bundle of grapes in his hands and

taking another bite.

Adrita Zaima Islam is an intern at Campus, The Daily Star. Reach out to them at zaima2004adrita@gmail.com.