“You are keeping him from forgiveness because you don’t want to let go of him. This is your excuse for keeping his memory intact – the wound doesn’t even exist anymore!”
“What rubbish! No. The wound does exist, how can it not? I can fill all my heart but that tiny void. His grave. And he must pay for it. If not here then there. But I…” she paused for a moment: “I must keep him answerable until then.”
“Dead use graves. Let him die for once.”
I never told you and never heard it. But when morning sun rises its especially assigned metaphor does too. Bless hope. Burn hope.
I never told you but I wonder if you kind of knew. You know, kind of. And wonder is the keyword. Because what else are we capable of? Oh existential dread.
I want to write something poetic. If I thought of you long enough, maybe I could. But who has the energy? I mean, even you would know that. Neither of us.
Some evenings are so breathtakingly stunning you don’t want them to end. Ever. And as everyone else is packing their stuff back in the car while some are already reserving their seats — so ready to return to their homes — you run back to the sea and the sky and the sand asking for one more infinite minute. That is your home.
It’s night and still hot. I am sitting cross-legged on the balcony’s floor, this black diary on my lap, and vibrant blues, orange and yellow underneath it: the colors of my shirt. Before me is a silent city even though it’s only after-dinner time. It’s only too soon to be writing this.
Or is it?
I am almost tired of using different words to say the same thing: I miss you. Here, take it from me. Jaan jati hai jab uth ke jatay ho tum.
What a stubborn child. Still sitting in the middle of nowhere, heart in hand. Hearts don’t mend like that – only sell. And you can’t afford that, can you?
What a stubborn, stubborn child.
Everything is fine. Outwardly. Where out is the edge of earth I’m standing on; inside me is a lava. It’s ready to erupt but wouldn’t—you’d think my body is brave enough to hold it but really, it’s the sight of uncountable blisters already on my skin that quiet it.
Before me lie fields and fields of night.
I can’t make sense of it, but sometimes I run, telling myself it’s still some direction even if I don’t know it. Alas, I find myself back where I started, my struggle wasted on dark space, and my already tired limbs.
I could have given a better answer, I thought to myself just a while (longer than a moment, shorter than minutes) after having exited his room. I could have given a better answer. How many times we find ourselves thinking, feeling, living this — I could have given a better answer. Could – but didn’t. And to learn to live with this little regret – one that amounts to literally NOTHING in the Grand Scheme of Things; to painfully watch how it unfurls inside of you, then finds a way out, crawls on your skin until you are covered, completely, in its inglorious cobweb-y silver thread. You are itching. Continually. I could have given a better answer, and I must stop thinking about it.
123
I could still show the pieces of your then-polluting, now-rotten heart, and prove to the world it was not I who was mistaken. I can also present myself as an evidence — a heap of mess, covering blisters caused by the burst of these emotions that never wait too long to spill. Ah, your name still holds magic.
130
تمہاری یاد آج بھی زخموں پر نمک کا کام کرتی ہے۔۔۔ چاہے یہ الفاظ استعمال کے ساتھ اپنی وقعت کھو ہی کیوں نہ چکے ہوں۔ ہاں، جلتے پر تیل، زخموں پر نمک۔ اچھا خاصا تمہیں بھول چکی تھی کہ آج ڈرائیور نے کہا کوئی دروازے پر پھول چھوڑ گیا ہے۔ پھول تو تمہاری طرف سے نہ تھے مگر ایسا تم کتنا کیا کرتے تھے! صدیاں تو بیت گئی ہونگی؟۔۔۔ اب کون سے پھول، کہاں کی خوشبو! ہاں مگر پھول تو آئے تھے۔ میں نے ڈرائیورسے پوچھا ان پر کوئی کارڈ لگا ہے کیا؟ جواب ملا، ہاں شاید۔ تو میں نے اس سے گذارش کی کہ خود ہی پڑھ کے بتا دے۔ مجھے تو ان سے وحشت آتی ہے! بیچارا حیرت سے دیکھ ریا تھا، پڑھ بھی دیا۔ کسی اور نے بھجوائے تھے اور بھجوائے بھی کسی اور کے نام تھے! میں تو سن کر ہنسنے لگی۔ ڈرائیور کو کہا ساتھ والے بنگلے میں جو سارہ بی بی رہتی ہیں انہیں کو دے آوٗ۔ ان کے لئے آیا ہے اور دیکھو یہاں پہنچ گیا! کوریر والے سے غلطی ہوگئی ہوگی۔ غلطیاں تو خیر سب ہی سے ہوتی ہیں۔ مجھ سے بھی ہوئی تھی۔
میں لاوٗنج سے اٹھ کر اپنے کمرے میں آگئی۔
145
Another cobalt blue sky lit by innumerable stars. Tiny, bright pockets of fairy-light. We sit just by the river, taking in the fresh scent of dewy grass, soft wind, and the feeling of our togetherness.
My feet are crossed and my heart is full. We don’t have enemies anymore – neither Time, nor the World. We are doing fine.
I stand up and step into the blue river. Your hand is in the water and you are splashing at it gently. As my feet touch its cool, smooth surface, we hear a strange music start. It’s coming from a distance but it feels so very near, so very soothing. Or was it from our hearts? I imagine stars coming closer – those tiny pockets of fairy-light falling to dance with me, and I look at you. You are smiling too.
—
The waves were full of voice unlike the world around them. Everywhere was silent, and the only other sounds were so soft you wouldn’t mind them. Like: the stars’ gentle sparkle, off on, off on, creating silver splashes in the vast water; the moon’s direct beams falling on its rubber surface like a spear cutting right through; my own breathing in harmony with each swift move of the said sea. It was only a matter of present, the moments synced to the space, emitting the same power: of might, of being the only thing that mattered.
Life is not a bed of roses. You say that like it’s a good thing. If I am not happy slash I feel really bad about something, there must be a way to make it right. You can’t shirk that responsibility and simply put it on those look-good quotes. Because first of all, I never asked for a bed of roses. And if that’s what you want to bring up, tell me why it becomes important only when I most need a rose? Life’s not fair, life’s a test, life’s a this, life’s crap. I don’t care about that, I care about now.
I walk further into the benevolent stretch and find the waves welcoming me. Singing more joyfully, as if meeting friends was a custom for them too. I look down and smile, and then half sit. My hand meets water and a shiver runs through me.
Why am I still scared? How could someone be aware of something and still be unable to get out of it? How can you not be your own magician, tricking life to set on the right zone again?
There’s no direction when you are standing between waves. There is just immensity. A compass self-connects to the tick tock of the heart, and there the music stays, for as long as the heart lives…
You close your eyes and your thoughts bubble up. Spread out from all corners. Wear the fabric of varying vibrant words. Very soon, they are carrying meanings and colors. A dance happens. A beautiful, rhythmical dance. You like it because it has all your soul. You see parts of yourself you had been waiting to see. And you realize you can hold it lightly from the tip of your wand and place it down on paper. There, it can live forever as a poem.
But you don’t do that. You force it away. You shove it powerfully with your hands– all those thoughts and words– and you push the splendid dancer in a grey, dark cell. She falls and she quietens, and she holds her bruised arm. You can’t see the colors anymore and you sigh with relief.
“Sea waves kiss my feet. I bend to hold wet sand in my hand and close my fingers for a while to feel. It slips away when I open them again but the lines on my palm glitter with a soft silver gleam. I turn back and night shifts and I find myself in another place. There is no sea, no waves, no wind. But the inside of my hand glitters still. I lay back down and find grass beneath me. Soothing and serene. I touch some strands to gather green. It tickles, softly. Your name I write then, on my skin, and smile. The universe smiles with me.”
Written in response to writing challenge 201: “Skin”. (Write a prose poem using internal rhymes; choose whatever meaning of skin speaks most to you.)
The lines on your face mapped the road to my heaven.
Clay blended with the holy water of passion, I drew your face with utmost devotion. It took days and nights of sit and struggle, but the value of work was much more greater. I couldn’t care less.
To finally feel you, I could barter every other possession treasurable or not. I have always worshiped you in my heart, and now my worthless fingers will learn the true experience of touch and adoration—they will memorize what my heart had did years ago.
That is, if you’d please allow.
Like her, the park is lonely and the air is sick. It smells of stale roses and untreated promises; and the swing on which she sits squeaks a song so pathetically sad it almost makes time stop — and time, like some humans, knows less when it’s better to instead tread quickly.
The grass below is wet with dew, as are her fingers which she continually bring to her face to wipe away the watery signs of fragility and brokenness. From somewhere far, a beautiful sparrow descends and stops right where she sits, to fly to and fro. Distracted by the sudden chirrup, she looks at her new companion and smiles.
“Will you stay, birdie?” she asks — only to remember soon after that wings always fly…
Written in response to today’s prose-poetry prompt: “fingers” (also goes for “cut off“)
it happened slow. the stars like lamps flickered out and their shine was faded off. non-white as they were– now black– you couldn’t locate them anywhere, except that in a while the one farthest from the satellite started to collect red from god knows where and in some more time it was blazing and hysterical, spinning to keep sane. full of secrets it couldn’t hold, light started to shoot uncontrolled, in all directions left and right and soon, each one of the million stars was bursting fires bright.
What is meant to happen, happens. Had it not rained quite so heavily this morning, you could still have gotten late for the meeting. Had it not been that one wrong course you took back in college, you would still have sat here tonight under the only star’s shade lamenting other decisions. Life is unsatisfactory, and knowing this only is satisfying enough at times.
You don’t need to be thankful for whatever happens around you every minute. This is not necessary. Though you do need to be at peace with things inside and out so you are not just existing but living–and you need this why? –because this is the pendulum’s last swing. You don’t want to ask yourself, “why did I not live?” after all of this is over. Instead, you have to make it more worthwhile than creating black out of your red.
If two beings are destined to meet, they will. The world cannot question it. But if your heart was meant to be broken, darling, it had to be so by him.
Doesn’t she look happy dancing in the rain with a heart so gay and young? With a face like that of an angel, and the floating gracefulness of a goddess, her own feet unaware of where she might put them next; she could perhaps be the luckiest in the world!
Like a wild flower in full bloom, oh, how she fills the air around her with the aroma and affect of her. How the stars sparkle in her presence and the earth stops to the rhythm of her steps! And how everything, in an unseen felt way, bows down to her—in respect of her happiness!
See how she flutters her wings and holds out her arms to fill in the falling rain in the cups of her palms, and then brings it to her lips to drink from it; as if it were a divine goblet! Or an elixir, pouring which will quench her deep thirst, and free her of all that torments her soul…
But it scares me to see her so, and I can’t really explain what I find unfitting in this picture. Maybe it’s in her eyes… which are grayer than the sky above her, or her laughter which doesn’t quite seem real. There is something in her tone that hints betrayal, something about her shadow that keeps dissolving minute by minute.
‘She must be a carrier of love’ is what I thought of her before. But maybe, as I now realize, it’s an injury better than that. Maybe, as her façade weakens and reality takes over, we won’t find a trace of what we see now. And for all they will know, she would be a girl who died dancing!
Apparently fixed on the ceiling, those stone-like eyes kept staring into nothingness and the worlds beyond it. The fan whirred slowly, like the clock ticked short taps, and the heart pumped liquid in and out. Everything moved in its own circle of existence, performing the allotted functions steadily and uncomplainingly. But even then, it felt like the world had somehow turned upside-down, and the fan whirred only to mock in its own given voice, the time moved to show how invaluable every other being before it was, and the muscle pulsated to define how the gods-on-earth were only too frail and fragile; not being able to keep anything from working or breaking—even their hearts.
Once unleashed, the mind traveled speedily into the fields of green and gold where the spark in one another’s eyes had signed smilingly the invisible yet undeniably substantial contracts of always staying together. It wandered farther to the streams of crystal blue waters where hands were held and oaths were repeated before angels of the world, and names were carved on rocks as well as on every atom of each other’s being. Tracing back the swift walks made across sand lanes and muddy roads, it came to rest only as the image of stars dancing as they were that night appeared on the retinas, and the sharp smell of white roses made their way through nostrils to the insides, causing currents to run down one’s spine.
How does it happen that a seemingly small wave envelops an entire universe in itself? How does Destiny fail Desire every time, and dreams turn to dust before reaching the realms of fulfillment? Why do the once saintly carriers of love blaspheme the very sanctity of it – leaving souls insecure and shattered forever?
Soft rain began to pelt against the room’s window bringing back the detested realizations of reality, and with a single tear that rolled down mournfully, all wounds were washed away until next time…
Randomly Abstract 