What Next?

Have you ever asked yourself that question?

I bet everyone has, at one point in their lives. Things might have been good or bad, situations easy or difficult, relationships complicated or… well very very complicated, but you do get to a point in your life where you ask yourself, what next?

You see dreams. You work hard to fulfil them. And then you ask yourself what next? And you see more dreams. It’s a vicious circle. It goes on. It’s called life.

I bet some of you remember me from my old writings. I used to be in the darkest shit-hole ever and I used to rant here about it. When I read it now, I cry for my past self. I got married. I moved to this big world that I had never imagined before. And I stopped writing. But things have changed. Things are meant to change right. You can’t just stay at one place forever and ever now, can you? So I got divorced, some year and a half ago. My passport and travel documents were stolen from my bag so that I can’t go back.

And then I was at my parents house. Sitting on that brown sofa where I spent, I can’t even remember how many days just lying down watching days becoming nights and nights rolling into days. I woke up shaking everyday, and then I remembered my world is shaking. My soul, my being was shaking. I remember, remembering at that time that I have never been through such pain before. And I have never caused that much pain to my loved ones before. I came back for ten days and was left to rot there forever. I still hear remnants of my mom’s shrieks in the middle of the night and my dad’s tears still seep into my heart drop by drop.

But you never took me to be like the ones who give up easy, did you? I didn’t. I had to do something to get up again. My life was revolving around like a movie in my eyes. Not the life that I spent in the past, but the life I would have to spend in the future as a young divorced girl in my parents house. It was now or never. I somehow managed to get new passport and travel documents, spent all my savings to get back here in this foreign country. Had an interview on a call with a company and took tests on a borrowed computer. Sent out hundreds of job applications on my mobile because I didn’t have access to a laptop. But I got out in the end.

I lived in shitty student accommodations till I could afford a nice flat to rent. The day I moved into my new, my own home was the best day of my life. I felt proud of myself. The day my company offered me a sponsorship to work for them, I felt proud of myself. The day I setup my own home office with a beautiful big screen, I felt proud of myself. The day I started spending money not on myself, but on my family, I felt proud of myself.

Right now, sitting in my warm house in a corner with a beautiful pink rose vase standing just beside me on the window sill, I can feel tears welling up in my eyes. But this story is not about tears for every story is not meant to be sad. There is much more to my story than I have poured out here this time.

But some things are better left unsaid…

Forever

Open your hand, He says in a voice so calm that pinches her heart, like always. She tightens her clenched fist a bit more, for she knows once opened, not only herself but both of them will be left empty-handed once again.

They sit there, in her room beside her writing desk, staring at the laptop screen. So close but so apart that there are worlds between them. Listening to the tick-ticks and the silence, hearts sinking to immeasurable depths.

They are different. She lies. He tells the truth. She saves her world but destroys herself. He destroys his world but saves himself. Always. Yet they sit here, bound together with their weird connection, like nothing ever happened when their world is on fire. Fire? is it dangerous than silence? Of course it is. It destroys? and what does silence do? It kills. Destructed can be rebuilt, but there is no coming back after death.

She opens her fist. Nothing happens. The air still suffocates. Tick-ticks keep on piercing their hearts. and silence? It has already killed them.

I am sorry for your loss. I am sure you are sorry too, for mine. Our losses will look different, from the outside. But trust me, both of us have lost ourselves forever. Forever.

Forever.

17 July 17.

I Find Myself Scattered…

I find myself scattered amid times age-old

In myths beyond expression, In tales untold

In sinful thought of a saint with heart unsure

In glare of kindness that emits from a whore

In pure love between a couple,weirdest of all

Man as tiny as a dwarf, Girl so fat and tall

In the winds that blow away veil of a wise girl

With face painfully ugly, eyes green like pearl

I find myself scattered amid times age-old

In myths beyond expression, In tales untold

In wildest fears of Syrian Refugees in a boat

In eyes of Peshawar child, knife at his throat

In the fire that burn Gaza’s screaming new-born

In bullets fired at her mother with ripped womb

In hopeful eyes of tiny girl fighting with Cancer

In ungratefulness of healthy finding no answer

I find myself scattered amid times age-old

In myths beyond expression, In tales untold

In the Kaaba of my soul, In Prayers unheard

In pleasant sounding sad chirps of a caged bird

In emptiness of Namaz, In pleasures of Love

In finding Him in heart, not in the sky above

I find myself scattered everywhere but in me

Help me gather up myself, Please let me BE!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bless me.

Bless me with pain, I want to feel alive

once again.

Bless me with tears, I need to cry out

my fears.

Bless me with love, I want to shine

high above.

Bless me to pray, to push this void

far away.

Bless me to beat despair, to breathe in

fresh air.

Bless me to write, to live once again

with pride.

Bless me a fresh start, to wake up my

sleeping heart.

Please bless me with pain, I want to live

once again !

Words are out of my grip. My fingers have stopped writing. The struggle I had to do, to write such less words, was very hard on me.

 

 

 

A Walk To Remember

Water, it is everywhere. Right behind the place where I live, there is a magnificent sea where shades of blue shine with yellow glitter dust of sun rays. Sometimes, fresh fragrant breeze cushions the sun and delicately wraps it in the blanket of clouds. While sometimes, showers of fresh water purifies the surroundings.

I wander at the beach and get lost. Lost in the sadness of sea waves that travel all the way to the beach and slowly crawl back. Lost in the roars of sea waves that strikes the rocks in fury and make me think, why are the waves that reach at the beach so calm and why are those which strike stones so angry ? I don’t know. I don’t want to. I just know that I have to find myself between this calmness and fury, somewhere between sand and rocks.

While searching for my lost self, I walk through life with hands tucked in pockets. White trainers imprint stamps of my past over the sand of my present while I stare at the void of future. I stare with -4.00 shortsighted astigmatic eyes, at the blurry line that tends to join blue and white shadows. The enchanted beauty of this place overwhelms me.

I see a lot of people on my way, taking a walk with their dogs. I see them loving and caring for their dogs as if they are their own children. I feel the connection and I can understand the reasons. Everyone has his own way of getting over life after all. But I don’t know why, every dog barks at me and tries to jump over me. Maybe they see me as an ugly alien or may be they are racist, reality is tough both ways !

Their is a brown colored long bench at one corner of sea front which I can call as my happy place these days. It has a wall build all around it and a roof which makes it appears like a small dark room open at the front. There are names carved on this bench and at some places a sign of heart appears to be drawn too between two names. I don’t understand why people would do that, and then I find myself doing the same. It feels good to be a part of crowd sometimes.

 

I sit there and breathe. Breathing is new to me, I held it inside myself for too long and it aches at times to let it out all at once. With an empty mind I absorb soothing silence inside me. Thousands of seconds pass by and time stops. Or may be, it repeats itself in endless loops. Past, present and future flow somewhere along this loop.

A mobile beep brings me back to reality, where my husband waits for me at home to give him lunch. I have to go back, but this walk… I will remember forever.

Topic Inspired by Weekly Challenge.

 

 

 

 

Cracked Pink Mirror

Holding a small cracked pink mirror in her right hand she would stare at her bald head for hours. Her lifeless stone eyes would feel focused and concentrated as if they were trying to break the mirror into pieces with their melancholic gaze. Left corner of her bottom lip was swelled with bruises and clogged blood on it. A similar kind of wound could be seen at the center of her neck near the collar bone. Sometimes when she couldn’t stare at the mirror, her hands could be seen scratching her wounds with her sharp nails. It was impossible for her to rest her hands even for a few seconds. That’s what her Mother would say, three years ago, when she would keep herself busy in doing unnecessary chores along with the necessary ones. Three years later, her habits were more or less the same.

Close your eyes and think about the happy moments in your life if you want to end your depression, a voice would echo in her head. She would close her eyes but she could see nothing except the haunting black darkness. You come alone in this world and you have to return back alone. At some point in life, every relation fades away from your life. It is you who are left, hanging alone between the sky and the ground. Just start living for yourself, the voice would continue. She would look around gently and smile. He would smile back. She never was alone.

Thick tear drops would come out of her stone eyes and get absorbed in the pillow when she would yell and cry her throat out. Her feet could be seen rubbing against the hospital bed. Her fists clenched, struggling with immense pain. Eyes, closed so tightly as if they would crack themselves from inside, like her cracked pink mirror. She had to go through the same, everyday for three years. Her cracked pink mirror wasn’t broken yet. He always gives you the amount of pain that you can bear. She sure was made tough enough.

It spread in her blood through her veins, like the same way love spread once. Suffering was the same. The only difference was that love used to kill her everyday while this would kill her once and for all. Waiting for death is awful. Waiting is always awful. Death on the other hand is comforting. It gives life. It completes the cycle.

Love was necessary, so were the departures.

White is life, black is death. Living in the shades of grey is always painful.

She has Him. Who knows He would hold her hand gently and walk her to the black meadows or He would let her rejoin white.

Only in the darkness can you see the stars.

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The Real Face Of Real Terrorists

A Palestinian girl stands in a destroyed building following an Israeli military strike in Gaza City on July 08, 2014.

With red bulging eyes burning like hell, his distressed slow steps dragged his dead body into the class room. His beloved students got amazed as they took a glance of his miserable self in contrast to the usual polished and well dressed one.

Every student in this class loved their teacher ever since he had been teaching them. Their hearts literally missed some beats as he spoke out in a broken voice, again, very unusual as compared to his usual soft polite voice.

“How are you all”

“We are fine Sir !” They all spoke out at once. The pin dropped silence scattered for a second and then settled itself back.

He never used to teach them in ordinary ways i.e by reading from books or through cramming. He had his own style. He would usually tell them an incomplete story and then students would ask questions to complete that story extracting all the hidden lessons inside.

“Listen to my today’s story carefully students, it is real and the topic is sensitive” His voice felt hollow as he continued.

The world’s most “moral army” of Israel committed a new massacre this Sunday, November 18, 2012.

The Israeli aircraft bombed a 5-storey building in Gaza City, a building that houses 40 people, belonging to the Dalou family: 12 people died in the Dalou family, among them: six children, three women and two seniors. There were 25 wounded.

And the atrocities continued—

As the Israeli military’s “Operation Protective Edge” entered its third day, the death toll in Gaza continued to mount. As of this writing, at least 81 Palestinians have been killed in three days–among them 22 children-and over 550 injured as a result of the air force dropping hundreds of bombs. A driver for journalists was killed, as were Palestinians watching the World Cup at a beach coffee shop.

Zero deaths of Israeli people has been recorded so far.

The typical Israeli crimes against the children and civilians, a new massacre against humanity…

And a new silent complicity of the countries that claim to defend human rights.

A piercing cold silent breath followed his voice as he stopped and searched for questions in the scared eyes of his students who were sitting still while holding their breaths.

“Sir, After all the atrocity of US on Iraq, India on Kashmir and Israel on Palestine, why do they still call us Muslims as terrorists?” A sad innocent student finally spoke out.

“Because my son, they needed some solid base to aim their atrocities at, and to blame weak and innocent people by exploiting them on the basis of religion. They have to hide their terrorism by calling Muslims doing Jihad as terrorists”

“Sir, What exactly is Jihad ? As non-Muslims claim that every Muslim doing Jihad is a terrorist, Is this true ? “

“Let me make it clear for you.

What is Jihad:

1- Travelling to another Muslim majority country like Palestine where non-Muslims have invaded and they are doing barbaric activities and injustice, and fighting against them with weapons is Jihad.

2- Spreading the word about the atrocities of non-Muslims doing atrocities on Muslims, or about the bad activities happening in one’s own country by writing or speaking on radio or reporting or by any means, is Jihad.

3- Striving against the evil desires of the soul is a kind of Jihad.

4- Spending wealth for the greater good of people who are under oppressive rule, who are not free to do anything. is Jihad.

What is NOT Jihad:

1- Suicide bomb blasts is by no means called as Jihad.

2- Fighting with the innocent people with weapons, without any reason is not Jihad.

3- Forcing non-Muslims to enter in Islam by using force is not Jihad.

4- Spreading hostility and destroying peace by any means is not Jihad.

And about the other part of your question. No, every Muslim who truly does Jihad is called as Jihadi. Unfortunately there are some people,extremists to be precise, who have no idea what Jihad is and they spread terrorism on the name of religion and Jihad. These are the people who are responsible for making an image of ‘terrorist’ for every Muslim in the minds of people all around the world.

“What should we do Sir, to fight against the atrocities of Isreal? How can we play our part?”

“You are the young pure future image of Muslims my students. Hold your pen and tell the world about the real face of terrorists. Fight against them, if not with the sword, then with your pen and tongue.You have to fight until they stop their barbaric actions on innocent people. Tell them, Islam is about peace. Tell them how the real face of terrorists look like”.

His breath started clustering in his throat and tears came rushing out of his eyes.

“Sir, are you alright? ”

“No, I am not alright. I have lost my only 4 years old son in the bomb blasts of Israel. I am not fine, because I couldn’t save my son as I was teaching my students at the time he was taking his last breaths. I won’t be fine till Israel stops killing innocent people in Palestine and I won’t be fine until every human being on this earth stops killing other human being on the name of religion and geographical boundaries. I won’t be fine until ‘humans‘ start practicing ‘Humanity‘ ”

Say NO to the Terrorism of Israel with Me !

A photographic journey to the terrorism of Isreal (Source) :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving on….

“And yes, you moved on… So easily ! It didn’t even take you a while.”

He cries with a voice brimming with pain.

She sighed. That’s what she do when words cut like knives. Words… That are not actually words, but boiling emotions seal packed in some random alphabets.

“You say I moved on…. Yes,maybe I did.”

4 whole years of painful depression were quite enough for me to understand that ‘this’ is not life. Life is something else…. Something better. Four years, i prayed for you….. He listened to and replied to each prayer i made but this one.

“aur insaan shar ko aisay mangta hai jesay khair ko… Aur insaan bara hi jaldbaaz waqay hua hai”

Your ishq led me to His ishq… And i did kufr for four whole years by holding on to mere ishq e majazi along with the ishq of supreme. You taught me the meaning of love…. But you never knew it yourself.

The minute i stopped praying to be with you….He announced his descision….His will….His orders.

And now after just 3 months of my marriage i have learnt…..He is after all the best planner.

The person He gave me loves me….and this love is the sacred one…bounded in the walls of marriage.

Tell me one reason to hold on to you still… It doesn’t matter now who i love…. What matters is that i have to live…happily..for the persons who love me….for myself.

And i am happy…. Expectations hurt and i don’t expect. Life gives me a new surprise daily and i am accepting His will. 

Your love lies inside my heart….like a bare thorn pricking and tingling the walls but it can’t come out…. My heart cries but there is someone now to wipe my tears off. You were not made for me…. Our love was forbidden.

And they say forbidden love teaches you the lessons and secrets which no knowledge can. 

May be that’s why people pass their whole lives searching for Him while He lives so close to them…but they can’t “get” Him… He likes to be searched.

You say i moved on…. 

Should i continue trying to move on or should i hold on and fight with what He wants? 

I’ll do whatever you decide.”

He stares at her with red stone eyes…. 

She spread her hands to pray for him…..

Love never dies but it can stay in the abandoned graves of heart….

She weeps and prays for him…till she return back to her “moved on” happy satisfied life…

Things have always been complicated for them….thet still are. Trying to solve these complications is the key.

She tried…. he’ll too one day.

“…….aur pher hoga wohi jo meri chahat hai”

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This post is not edited…. just wrote it on my phone and felt like posting it. I’ll reply to all your comments and start regular blogging in a while. Thanks to all of you who still read my useless posts.

 

Your Thoughts ?

With that same old empty mind and heart, I sit here again and write. No specific topic in mind and no idea how long or short my words can weave this thread. I don’t know this connection, I can never understand it. The connection of my heart with your words. They say you always learn when you sit back and listen to the silence.  They say it right. This sheer silence tears up my mind… The echo of fan piercing through the calmness of summer afternoon tells me tales…. Tales that are weird, unimportant but very interesting.

Happiness, contentment….. the two things I wanted the most throughout my life. I got them…. I was a cry baby, as you know it, when I left you guys almost three months ago. In these three months I enjoyed the most happiest moments of my life….. My world turned upside down but guess what ? The down side was not that bad. It was good… It pleasured me with the most exciting tastes. I am happy with the guy my parents chose for me….. The nightmares I used to see are gone.

But…I am afraid to share my feelings right now with you. You’ll judge me wrong. I am happy but still, I feel the need of writing in distress, In the saddest hours. Life is going good…. at least for now. My past is still with me but I have learnt to live the present. I’ll share these tales some other time.

A weird thing has started happening to me. After a week or so, In the nights I have severe depression and panic attacks. I cry out loud and I don’t know why does it happen and I feel like I am drowning in darkness or something, I don’t actually understand the feeling. My mind pricks me and this condition lasts for an hour or so and the dies. I don’t know why it happens but it is severe and painful. Do anyone of you has any idea why does it happen or what it is ?

 

How Are You ?

Two months and thirteen days…I was absent from here. In two months and thirteen days I learnt a lot. Things that were invisible, things that are beautiful and ugly at the same time. Hardcore facts. While I write today after a long time, words slip out of my fingers like they used to be before. I thought they would have forgotten the path of my heart through fingers but they didn’t.

I missed you all so very much. Writing here today just to tell you that I am fine and I know you guys may have, sometime in your life while wandering through blogs, missed me too. I hope you all are writing energetically and struggling through life bravely.

I’ll be back in some days. I miss writing things out. That was my thing, it still is. In the meantime I’ll try to read your new blogs and reply to your comments.

Stay happy ! Love you all.

Waiting For A Dead Promise

Credits : This

It starts with a heavy pinpoint, sharp, deep in the middle of my heart. As I read Mic’s letter, it swells and blooms, licks like fire through my veins.

It’s a cold windy day and I’m at the window table trying to read the first letter he sent me. At least that is what I should be doing but I spend more time watching the dry leaves clattering across the sidewalk.

I sat here daily, for twenty years with a shotgun in hand. That shotgun is replaced by letters now.

He said, “I’d come back to you no matter what happens”.

I promised him, “I’ll wait for you, forever”

It’s growing dark and the streets are already empty. It has been a chilly, depressing day. I could hear howling wind and one long, repeated call — a bird perhaps.

The feeling I felt then, was love underneath, but it was wrapped in something hard and cold and perpetual.

Death.

Death has followed me for 40 years. Death came for my father first, it sputtered him out like a spent candle. I was seven then. 10 years later it took my mother. Everything I ever loved was gone with the tilt and flare of a scented candle against a curtain. Since then, I resolved never to put myself in a situation that could shatter the way my childhood did. The only way to avoid death was to run.

It worked perfectly for nine years until I met Mic. I felt life exuding from him, surging and bright. For a moment I was certain Death must be looking elsewhere. It stirred at my shoulder, tickled my ear, reminded me it was watching, waiting, poised to poison anyone I opened my heart to.

Everyday little letters from Mic, yellow envelopes addressed in green pen, would wait for me. I replied back, I told him about my father, my mother. About Death on my shoulder.

That day, I was woken from a lay-in by a tentative knock at the door. It was Mic. I was overwhelmed, frozen. He dived at me, wrapped his arms around me. My heartbeats were so golden and warm Death didn’t stand a chance.

You can’t keep him… Death whispered, nervous. Run, before it hurts.

It offered me it’s most enthusiastic ‘contrafibularities‘ that could never be defined just as death could never be defined.

I smiled. And said yes to Mic’s proposal. Because I thought Death couldn’t catch either of us if we’d run together.

The shrill call comes again, thin, high, and mournful. What kind of bird calls like that? Something is out there.

The wind is tapping branches against the window. I look out but see nothing. Dusk is falling but the street lamps are not on yet. Then I see a tiny movement right under my window. Something is crouching below the marigold bushes. A hurt bird, perhaps?

After they reported Mic dead, I began to keep the shotgun next to the front door.

I’d sit for hours beside my window table staring outside, thinking that the day he’d return, reeking of decay, I’d run a finger down the barrel of the shotgun, propped beside me.

“Thank you for coming. I waited for you” I’d say.

“I promised.” He’d smile under the bullet hole they would have put through his forehead. Dried blood would flake off of his eyelid when he’d blink.

“I’m not coming with you,” I’d say.

“Death has done us part. Let it join us together once again.” He’d say.

“I have decided to fight against it” I’d tell him.

I drape myself in a warm brown shawl and open the door to see what that thing is.

A small bundle of grey fur, a tiny kitten, hope ? almost lost in the gloom. It meows, a thin, desperate sound.

When I pick it up, it is ice cold and I can feel every vertebrae. It’s nothing but a skeleton. I look out for any scratches or bites, she was safe. I take it into the warmth and give her milk. It opens great green eyes and looks at me. It rumbles in an attempt to purr. After a while it curls up in my lap.

Some people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them, he can’t blame me for breaking mine. Before moving on, for twenty years, with a shotgun in my hand, I sat there and waited, but he never came back.

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Okay I’m in love with the zombie apocalypse, the idea fascinates me so much. I’m sorry if it disgusts you 😉 The story is written about the time when zombies would be somehow sensible, they’d actually remember things rather than just “Brains”.

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More or less 740 words story written for speakeasy. The challenge this time was to use, “I sat there and waited, but he never came back” as the last line and give some kind of reference to  a scene from the British comedy show,  Blackadder the Third. Hope you enjoyed. Click on the badge to see detailed rules and other entries on Tuesday.

A Glimpse through The Curtains

Wikipedia

This is the city that never sleeps. Behind all the shaded windows, countless mysterious stories unfold themselves in the nights and veil themselves in artificial colors as the sun rises. 15 thousand People; but they are as unknown to each other as they are to their own selves. Thick apathetic curtains conceal their inner self and even identities. And hence they live, as neighbors under the sinful shadows.

A young boy wearing a T-shirt and denims appear from one of the buildings among an array of other sky-high buildings. His hair are styled with jell and a shiny brown leather jacket covers his shirt entirely. His breath smells of friend eggs and his face expressions look as simple as noodles. Hands in pockets, he looks around standing in the middle of the colony. He can hear dull laughter coming out of that red door, where a decent woman lives who once sold her own girl to a rich businessman abroad. A man wearing black suit passes by the boy, a respectable man who supplies drugs all over the country.

He stand there impatiently biting his lips until he took a glance of a girl looking through the window. His heart beats become irregular and a pain initiates at a place where his heart lies, pumping blood through his veins, blood that turned white since all his family got killed in drone attacks when he was 15. She is only one person left in this world that he loves, but he can’t be with her because she is from a high class family. Her father is a politician who is involved in big time frauds and embezzlement but her respectable family can’t marry their daughter to a boy with no job and status.

His past starts playing in the form of a movie in front of his eyes. He remembers the time when a man in black coat came to rescue him while he was shedding tears sitting beside the graves of his entire family. He told him to save his tears and anger for the final day, and he did. He lived 8 years waiting for that final day and today was the day. He stole a final look of her beautiful face and walked forward to catch his flight.

The other day, news papers were filled with headlines about the Suicide bomb blast; several people lost their lives and many were injured. Somewhere in the pile of blood stained body parts lie his head void of pain of losing his beloved ones, eyes caught up at a scene of the place where five graves lie side by side. He didn’t know how many graves he has made to take revenge of those five graves.

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A flash fiction piece of 450 words under the limit o 500 words, written for Daily Prompt a well as Write On Edge. This challenge gives a photo prompt along with a quote. It’s up to you whether you want to follow the photo or the quote or both. I chose the photo. To read other awesome entries click on this badge.

My Nostalgic Winters.

Image by:
ibilicious.deviantart.com

I hate the chilled winds of January. They are nostalgic to me and I am not a person who can enjoy nostalgic moments sitting on an easy chair with closed eyes. It makes me cold like ice, I mean the nostalgia. The winds do the same except that they affect the body alone.

Wearing two sweaters, jeans and a shawl I sit alone sometimes in my lawn looking at the green leaves and absorbing the warm sun rays in my body. I feel calm and often start thinking about the life I left behind far away. The life that was everything to me once.

I ate food made by the hands of a woman for four years. Living in a hostel it was difficult back then to ponder upon the facts of reality. I was involved so much in myself, I couldn’t see the others. She was a kind of woman about whom people use words like sign of bravery. I never saw her crying on her miseries. She had 5 children, two daughters and three sons. The elder one was about the age of 15 and the younger one was only 5. Her husband died four years ago and she was left alone with her kids to face this zoo filled with humans, animals don’t hurt they just bite.

Her relatives snatched everything that her husband had left behind. The house, the money in bank and even their daily use electronics. She wasn’t so rich that she could spend on lawyers and police. In these circumstances, the only option left for her was to leave the place where she sang songs of love and peace, once. I don’t know how but she managed to get a job in our hostel. She had no home by the time. She and her children used to sleep in the kitchen.

After some months she was able to start the vehicle of her life once again. Children were admitted to the schools with low fee.I miss her youngest son the most. I still remember him coming to my room and saying, “You promised to bring me candies”. I never forgot to buy candies for him every time I came home at weekends. He knew many stories about where his father is. Sometimes he’d say he is in the market buying toys for me. I never heard from his mouth that his father’s dead.I don’t know his mother told him those fake stories or he made them up.

And when everything was going smooth, she was diagnosed with cancer. A chilled gust of wind took away their virgin happiness once again. Her daughters were given the responsibility of kitchen and she started visiting the hospitals. She had no money to spend on her treatment. Just when she was losing hope in her eyes, she heard of a hospital in another city. She went there and by the grace of God, she was treated well. In developing countries like our’s, these kind of hospitals which treat the poor free of cost are considered as miracles. She is having her treatment done these days.

I always wondered why don’t she cry at her miseries. How can she bear so much pain without complaining? While listening to her stories I used to weep but I never saw her eyes wet. Sometimes when a big tears comes out, she wipes it with her hand and continues again.

The last time I met her, was a crucial time. We had our four years of education completed and following the rule of life, we had to leave. She was standing in the door. After putting my luggage in the car I came back to say a final goodbye. I couldn’t speak. Tears were stuck in my throat and words disappeared.I saw tears in her eyes. She came towards me and hugged me and I listened to her….she was crying. I was crying too. There was a difference, She cried in front of me for the first time. She kept crying till my car left. She was left behind. I moved forward. But the vision of her crying eyes was saved in my mind. It is still saved. It’ll be saved forever.

Those moments still bring tears in my eyes. She is more than just a memory to me. Memories can fade but true feelings can’t. They come out of your heart every winter season and haunt you. Chilled winds and abandoned feelings don’t make a good match. They never can.

An Excruciating Spasm Of Guilt

Lies inside her silvered heart

A golden memory wrapped in layers of mist

And a guilt torn apart

Tiny finger wrapped in warmth

Of embrace of her graceful Mother’s hands

As she teaches her to walk forth

Having lunch on the first day

At school, feeling touch of her mother’s hand on bread

Smiles the shine in her eyes grey

While kids play with toys, she pour

Her innocent wishes to her Mother’s mind -laying in her lap

As her Mother teaches her to endure

Having a single meal that day

She Glances at her Mother sleeping peacefully- and recall

She had nothing but water today

As grains of sand slip through hand

Time flew by, fading her childhood in mystic wraps

Now she was a girl strong enough to stand

Cherished was the ethereal time

Befallen under shadows of her Mother’s Love Divine

Problems dimmed by the wind chimes

With a flash her world shattered

Broken was her Mother’s heart, by her words angry and harsh

-She left with tears flooded

And came back on a stretcher

Wounded-Lifeless her Mother’s lies on blood filled white sheet

With a brand new shawl there

Woman who walked with her mother;told

She bought this shawl for her beloved daughter

To make her anger cold

Mind paralyzed and confused

She looked at her Mother’s feet- and Remembered she had

No money to buy shoes.

A post written in response to The Daily Prompt.