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