Pond on the Patio

/1/
The leaf, who is now rotting alone at the bottom of the pond, is relentless in looking up at the branchlet, the one living in the nearby clementine tree, the one that gave birth to her. With such certainty, she wishes she had the ability to miss him. Until now, the leaf can’t forget that time, just before dawn, when a gentle wind came with rain, and they unhurriedly turned her around and around, until she was separated from her parent branchlet, who had to look after so many leaves, all of them desperately striving to stay still. Now, the rotting leaf can’t even gaze back at the sun, who she’s sure has always been peeking at her from behind the thick leaves above. Leaves whose arrival is anticipated below by the moss, moss that is blanketing the stones and also the wall of the pond. On her first day there, the rotting leaf could feel something was missing: the open-air moisture, which was no longer freely available after she was collected in the water prison, a prison that once promised her a quick perish if she let the matter pass through her mouths. Or the sun and their palpitations, not fully perceptible now, whose light loved to play around with the branchlets, who would whisper their thoughts only if the passer-by wind buttoned his lips. And the matter the leaf gulped wasn’t the wind. The matter wasn’t sunlight. The matter caused her to surrender herself to the water, who couldn’t stop themself from swaying since the fish in the pond, from time immemorial, were once told by Someone not to ever, ever sleep. Mimicking the water now, the rotting leaf is dancing, bouncing here and there over the carpet of pebbles under her stalk. It never crossed her mind to ask the pebbles, Why do you always shut your eyes? She wishes she could get to know the pebbles one by one before she is completely decomposed and coalesces with the water, like all the leaves before her, who fell into this pond. She hates herself for worrying about the other leaves, the ones that fell to the ground around the tree. If the broom in the gardener’s hands failed to gather them, would they still rot and turn into compost?

*
With such certainty, she longs for the ability to miss him, the branchlet on the clementine tree.

*
Wouldn’t it be lovely if she could miss herself too—as a green, little bud.

/2/
The fish isn’t bothered every time a leaf falls into the pond. He knows that the water shouldn’t complain about who gets to fall into them. The water in the pond: his whole world. He is happy with the fact that just beside the pond resides a clementine tree, whose legions of leaves he sees as a gift since they always shelter him from the scorching sun, whose temperament has always been unpredictable. He loves that he gets to circle around the pond as much as he wants and even snatches and munches on the moss that’s constantly offering themself to him whenever the owner of the house forgets to pour food into the pond. Perhaps because the fish doesn’t have other things to do, nor the possibility to grasp how swimming against the river current or jumping from the peak of a waterfall would send his heart into intense palpitations. Perhaps because he would never feel the temptations of the worm on a hook. Even though he always knows whenever a leaf gets into the water, he knows that the leaf would rot and dissolve into the world that lets him be free to roam, and he knows that she wouldn’t move at all if not for his own marching. He never said to her, Don’t follow me around; better stay in that corner until whatever matter fully decomposes you. Not once does the fish think that the pond was put there only for himself; he lets everything be there with him, swaying in tune with the swirl of the water, who is often completely indifferent about his trajectories or directions. Because the water doesn’t have doors.

*
Even though sometimes the fish thinks he has passed through a plethora of doors.

*
He feels grateful that he gets to move around, not perpetually trapped in one place.

/3/
The water in the pond is nothing but a supine window, with a hobby of looking up. The water likes to wait around for the sun to flash by between the leaves of the nearby tree. She thinks the sunlight is clever enough, as they know how to move through her body to reach the moss below, which always hankers for some light. Imagine a water free of moss. Isn’t it always a trio of water, sun, and moss? The water knows things, including that within her flows a matter that would decompose the fallen leaves and help the moss grow. She knows that the sky where the sun loves to loiter around is truly and utterly out of her reach; she even knows that the myth about a leaf, a fish, and the moss that once travelled together to the Far Unknown is nothing more than a representation of the anxiety and fear that the place they are living in now would die out and disappear. And the sky is never a paradise for her. The sky often used her as a mirror, but she is now hidden by the legion of leaves of the nearby clementine tree, and those leaves are getting even more torrential since the sun and the rain keep encouraging them to proliferate. And it is she who has to babysit those leaves that can’t hold on to the parent branchlets, including the one that fell today just before dawn. She has to nurse her until she is fully decomposed and unravelled, no longer a recognizable entity that is distinct from her. Whereas the water has to love the fish without any reservation, so the fish can swim swiftly inside her, making her dance. Water may call herself water only if she can feel something glide through within her so powerfully that her liquid body dances, only if someone is thankful that she, the water, brings that someone some breath. The water loathes the question, Who has put all of us here to meet? For all she knows, she is apathetic about whether she once came from above, from the clouds in the sky, and how they sometimes looked like a host of sparrows, sometimes cotton bubbles, sometimes the darkened, off-white ceilings in the room visible from where she lies. Truly apathetic about whether she hailed from a spring down below that she sometimes dreamed of as a web of straight lines, or overlapping winding roads, or a labyrinth.

*
Why worry, when she is now a world on her own.

*
Without the help of language.

*

Kolam di Pekarangan

/1/
Daun yang membusuk di dasar kolam itu masih juga tengadah ke ranting pohon jeruk yang dulu melahirkannya. Ia ingin sekali bisa merindukannya. Tak akan dilupakannya hari itu menjelang subuh hujan terbawa angin memutarnya pelahan, melepasnya dari ranting yang dibebani begitu banyak daun yang terus-menerus berusaha untuk tidak bergoyang. Ia tak sempat lagi menyaksikan matahari yang senantiasa hilang-tampak di sela-sela rimbunan yang kalau siang diharapkan lumut yang membungkus batu-batu dan menempel di dinding kolam itu. Ada sesuatu yang dirasakannya hilang di hari pertama ia terbaring di kolam itu, ada lembab angin yang tidak akan bisa dirasakannya lagi di dalam kepungan air yang berjanji akan membusukkannya segera setelah zat yang dikandungnya meresap ke pori-porinya. Ada gigil matahari yang tidak akan bisa dihayatinya lagi yang berkas-berkas sinarnya suka menyentuh-nyentuhkan hangatnya pada ranting yang hanya berbisik jika angin lewat tanpa mengatakan apa-apa. Zat itu bukan angin. Zat itu bukan cahaya matahari. Zat itu menyebabkannya menyerah saja pada air yang tak pernah bisa berhenti bergerak karena ikan-ikan yang di kolam itu diperingatkan entah oleh Siapa dulu ketika waktu masih sangat purba untuk tidak pernah tidur. Ia pun bergoyang ke sana ke mari di atas hamparan batu kerikil yang mengalasi kolam itu. Tak pernah terbayangkan olehnya bertanya kepada batu kerikil mengapa kamu selalu memejamkan mata. Ia berharap bisa mengenal satu demi satu kerikil itu sebelum sepenuhnya membusuk dan menjadi satu dengan air seperti daun-daun lain yang lebih dahulu jatuh ke kolam itu. Ia tidak suka membayangkan daun lain yang kebetulan jatuh di kaki pohon itu, membusuk dan menjadi pupuk, kalau kebetulan luput dari sapu si tukang kebun.

*
Ia ingin sekali bisa merindukan ranting pohon jeruk itu.

*
Ingin sekali bisa merindukan dirinya sebagai kuncup.

/2/
Ikan tidak pernah merasa terganggu setiap kali ada daun jatuh ke kolam, ia memahami bahwa air kolam tidak berhak mengeluh tentang apa saja yang jatuh di dalamnya. Air kolam, dunianya itu. Ia merasa bahagia ada sebatang pohon jeruk yang tumbuh di pinggir kolam itu yang rimbunannya selalu ditafsirkannya sebagai anugerah karena melindunginya dari matahari yang wataknya sulit ditebak. Ia senang bisa bergerak mengelilingi kolam itu sambil sesekali menyambar lumut yang terjurai kalau beberapa hari lamanya si empunya rumah lupa menebarkan makanan. Mungkin karena tidak bisa berbuat lain, mungkin karena tidak akan pernah bisa memahami betapa menggetarkannya melawan arus sungai atau terjun dari ketinggian, mungkin karena tidak pernah merasakan godaan umpan yang dikaitkan di ujung pancing. Ia tahu ada daun jatuh, ia tahu daun itu akan membusuk dan bersenyawa dengan dunia yang membebaskannya bergerak ke sana ke mari, ia tahu bahwa daun itu tidak akan bisa bergerak kecuali kalau air digoyang-goyangnya. Tidak pernah dikatakannya Jangan ikut bergerak tinggal saja di pojok kolam itu sampai zat entah apa itu membusukkanmu. Ikan tidak pernah percaya bahwa kolam itu dibuat khusus untuk dirinya oleh sebab itu apa pun bisa saja berada di situ dan bergoyang-goyang seirama dengan gerak air yang disibakkannya yang tak pernah peduli ia meluncur ke mana pun. Air tidak punya pintu.

*
Kadangkala ia merasa telah melewati pintu demi pintu.

*
Merasa lega telah meninggalkan suatu tempat dan tidak hanya tetap berada di situ.

/3/
Air kolam adalah jendela yang suka menengadah menunggu kalau-kalau matahari berkelebat lewat di sela rimbunan dan dengan cerdik menembusnya karena lumut merindukannya. Air tanpa lumut? Air, matahari, lumut. Ia tahu bahwa dirinya mengandung zat yang membusukkan daun dan menumbuhkan lumut, ia juga tahu bahwa langit tempat matahari berputar itu berada jauh di luar luar luar sana, ia bahkan tahu bahwa dongeng tentang daun, ikan, dan lumut yang pernah berziarah ke jauh sana itu tak lain siratan dari rasa gamang dan khawatir akan kesia-siaan tempat yang dihuninya. Langit tak pernah firdaus baginya. Dulu langit suka bercermin padanya tetapi sekarang terhalang rimbunan pohon jeruk di pinggirnya yang semakin rapat daunnya karena matahari dan hujan tak putus-putus bergantian menyayanginya. Ia harus merawat daun yang karena tak kuat lagi bertahan lepas dari tangkainya hari itu sebelum subuh tiba. Ia harus merawatnya sampai benar-benar busuk, terurai, dan tak bisa lagi dikenali terpisah darinya. Ia pun harus habis-habisan menyayangi ikan itu agar bisa terus-menerus meluncur dan menggoyangnya. Air baru sebenar-benar air kalau ada yang terasa meluncur, kalau ada yang menggoyangnya, kalau ada yang berterima kasih karena bisa bernapas di dalamnya. Ia sama sekali tak suka bertanya siapa gerangan yang telah mempertemukan kalian di sini. Ia tak peduli lagi apakah berasal dari awan di langit yang kadang tampak bagai burung kadang bagai gugus kapas kadang bagai langit langit kelam kelabu. Tak peduli lagi apakah berasal dari sumber jauh dalam tanah yang dulu pernah dibayangkannya kadang bagai silangan garis-garis lurus, kadang bagai kelokan tak beraturan, kadang bagai labirin.

*
Ia kini dunia.

*
Tanpa ibarat.