Devil and pawn

Only yesterday mother had chided me for being so bold and brazen with my remarks. She had seen an ignorant nonchalance in my attitude and thought it her duty to warn me of the imminent perils of unattended speech. Today I had to return the favour. She was being too emotional, invested in reasons that were faulty and irrelevant, careless at best. So we hashed it out between ourselves; she would be the devil and I the pawn, and tomorrow we would switch places and re-enact the entire play. Now that the parts were assigned, we stood stripped of ambition and malevolence, courageous enough only to scream profanity back at the spectators who once marveled at our fortitude from the sidelines. And today I am what I have become – the daughter who turned against mother, who swore to be good and follow the lettered command to be honourable, but in a bid to be caring and protecting, left her to sleep while promising to be there, waiting with a glass of milk when she awoke.

Mother was sick and though she would never have me, I knew she needed me here. But a selfish abandon beckoned and I ran as soon as her eye lids stopped fluttering and never looked back to see her gasping for breath when she awoke. Tomorrow will be my turn to play devil.

an excerpt

and in this night we stray
perchance we may find grief
and encounter remorse strung into a rosary
each bead bearing witness to
a contemptuous lie, a palpable delusion,
reflections upon which we have built
this sturdy mountain of truth

if you ignore the ignorance we are steeped in,
i will tell you that i know the meaning of these words

Wisteria vines

I have lost
ability for agile speech and
finding meaninglessness in things mundane
and have infused a sense of
dainty religiosity
tempered with aromatic musings
into a life that is worth living, worth falling for,
but never lived and never felt

And in the process of this arduous acquisition
of missing pieces that were perhaps overlooked, perhaps simply
cast aside,
somewhere alongside winding roads of poetry and
broken promises buried underneath snow-covered pavements,
I went searching for severed seasons and veiled reasons
ones that no longer visit us and steer clear of
our hesitant conversations, always tainted now
with a false sense of sincerity, the kind that
creeps alongside wisteria vines
and abandoned dreams

A confessional

Colour and Permanence. After much agonizing, those are the things I have realized I need. Relief from Scrambled Thoughts, Overwhelming Label-Less Emotions that have taken up residence for no good reason is desperately desired. The suitcases have been emptied, colour co-ordinated clothes and handbags hung in an unfamiliar closet, assorted sock pairs folded and neatly assembled in a new drawer. Cardboard boxes filled with books, trinkets, miscellaneous things we couldn’t part with have found new niches on foreign tables and recently dusted shelves. They show no fear, no reluctance, and we marvel at how easily these inanimate objects that mean the world to us move on so quickly, without looking back, without even a final glance. They settle with such comfort and ease, forget so fast the places they once called home, places that are still haunted by our decapitated hearts and souls. We, who have left behind everything worth taking, and only remembered to pack Lifeless Bodies for the future, are broken.

But I know a day will come when our souls will return and it will be a bittersweet reunion.

I never told you this, but I fought furtive battles in my room at night when the alarm clock had been set and the lights turned off. Only the indiscriminate car alarm and resident wind witnessed the struggle to keep going, the resolve to never look up, and the flurry of prayers that beseeched not for success, but for a mere passing. A plain, simple, that’ll do. I never wanted anything more, would be satisfied with less if it meant that I could still cross the bridge and make it to the Other Side.

I am not the destitute river
that never made it to the ocean;
I am the sturdy rock
underneath the ceaselessly gliding water
that simply
erodes with time.

I know that writing this down is futility; there is a lot that needs to be said, but truth dictates that I hold back and hide all the lies that I had gifted over the years, wrapped and topped with a bow. And after all this time, I’m still sorry that that the innocent baggage of The Past had affected me so, that the taunting and the unyielding silence meant so much, that the mark his Anger and Eventual Disappointment left stung for more than that endlessly long second, that the bruises still submerged, sit quietly and submissively underneath the thick, impenetrable skin. I’m sorry that I buried myself under the pretentious glare of acceptance, and that years later I found myself first cowering under the spotlight of solitude, then relentlessly seeking it.

Most of all, I’m sorry that all this means so much more than I’ll ever be able to understand why. I simply seek refuge in the luxury of reflection and marry my regrets to The Past even while those around me are still mired so absolutely in a sorrow far too real to comprehend. Yet I will resent this past even as I embrace it, and I will fear your future, even as I hope for it. And so long as there is Colour and Permanence, I will return.

Mercy

Truth be told, I took a fall
and tumbled headlong into an abyss
of crafted sympathies and broken sentiments
favouring unhappy explanations over
seemingly trivial epiphanies

We fought alongside hunger and greed
for a manifest way, a path not carelessly strewn
for veiled hearts and blinded eyes

Tell me Dina, did you cry those fierce nights
when the wailing cats kept your misery company?
Or did you swallow back the rising waves
of emotion
threatening to crash over sturdy, slightly flexible souls?

We cried for you, you know.
We, who once struggled, who once fought,
who once, a long time ago,
learnt that victory is small, meager
and bereft of eternal sunshine

I ache to tell you, as do every verse and every secret shared
that pain is everlasting, disappointment is fitting
and cloudy days survey horizons for specks of light to extinguish.
But in every pinch of pain, in every trickle of disappointment
and in every rain-burdened cloud,
there is mercy,
far be it for me to hide it

Flashes of blue

Maybe there is life
in this small, sardonic smile
that flirts with your lips
while you contemplate promiscuity
in forgiveness
as I play with words, attempting to
sway your emotions
and drive you far, far away from here
far from the limited imaginings,
from the confined spaces of stark reality
and into a world where
flashes of blue
inhabit the brown spaces between
red and yellow magnetic leaves
that have lost their green but continue
to hum radiantly, with an undue vitality for those
approaching death
and maybe, just maybe,
if you were to relish this time,
then perhaps we could walk, or hitchhike if you please
to that far, far away time from here
and be greeted by flashes of blue –
small, sardonic-smiled flashes of forgiveness

Surface secrets

From an early age on, they knew never to speak of it. It wasn’t taught to them – these things you do not, cannot teach, but it was implied. Implied in the curves of the commas and the slopes of the apostrophes that punctuated every simple syllable; implied in the lazy languid expressions worn on the frail, distraught faces of those who knew, who had washed their hands of the greedy affair, seven and a half years ago.

Time passed those years peculiarly, never betraying the secret, never giving it even a passing nod of acknowledgment though it traveled with them always, hovering overhead like an ominous cloud pregnant with rain. But most times there was calmness. A sense of normalcy arched over the long, seemingly endless bridge of life and traffic flowed smoothly and ceaselessly with little perturbation.

But if one looked hard enough, searched for it in places hidden and deep, beyond the busy streets and littered sidewalks, it could be found loitering discreetly amidst the glaring headlights of buses and cars as they sped through the cacophony of rush-hour traffic. Searched out by keen eyes and coaxed into view by unsettled fumbling feelings, they found it alive and well, more pervasive then they had imagined it to be.

It inhabited their houses by night, walking in soft slippers and speaking in hushed whispers, and in the morning when curtains were pushed aside and windows thrown wide open for the welcoming of sunshine and delusion into their homes, it mingled with the rays of light that burst forth and manifested itself in the promiscuous specks of dust dancing their way into cushion-covers and side-arms of couches and love seats. It dwelt amongst them, was a part of them so closely entwined with their identities that they could no longer see it, no longer feel it, and blissfully unaware, they allowed it to entrap them in its dizzying snare.