You know the thing that suffocates you till you can’t breathe anymore? That’s a wish. And then that dark shadow that occupies your mind and shuts off the light of your eyes just before making you unconscious? That’s despair. And then a sudden air that forces it’s way up your nose and mouth and pumps your heart very hard and makes you feel alive again? That’s hope.
It is raining outside. Whenever it rains, my heart talks nonsense just like that.
I don’t hate rains like other people do here (By here I mean, here, In the city where I live now. where weather is cold almost throughout the year).
Rain is still like a mystery to me. I haven’t experienced getting wet in it with hands stretched in the air and face towards the sky. I don’t know what it feels like to sit on the stairs in front of my home with a mug of coffee in hands and staring at the rain drops pouring on the ground beside me. I don’t know the warmth of hugging someone special while standing in the rain showers. I’d also like to scream and laugh out loud in the streets though there might be a risk of being caught in this.
All I have seen of rain is from my window glass, while reading a book or staring outside purposelessly. Sad, Quiet.I want to know it more but I am scared. I am scared that if I’d know and experience everything about rain that’s mystery to me now, what will I do then? There would be nothing left to wonder about. It will all be over.
Then, I’ll start hating it like others.
I know that’s absurd. I am being strangely honest. I am so scared of taking one step further and I don’t know when this habit took control of me. I can just think and think for hours of getting out of my comfort zone but I have no courage to step out practically. I am not brave enough.
May be I am still circling around into the darkness of despair or may be, I am breathing that fresh air of hope but I haven’t realized it’s there.
Naik seerat ki daaghdaar, achun ko bana dia the bura
Yun aj zindagi ki haqeeqat apni auqaat dikha gae thi
Khaloos ki qabar per mere dil me udaasi c cha gae thi
Jab paisay k ghulaamun ko hirs o havas k mun me dekha
Me ne tab rishtun ki laash ko latt patt khoon me dekha
This poem here was an impulsive reaction of brutal things going on around me. I don’t know why I have written it in Urdu and I don’t know why I have written it at all. It may have no sense, but it is an honest portrait of my surroundings.
An elegant beauty with glassy, unblinking eyes and a straight face veiled in abyss.He couldn’t find better words to illustrate her charm at that time, in his mind.He sat next to her on the bench she was sitting, with her hands clenched to the corners.
“I thought you have stopped thinking like you used to do. That deeply.”
“I tried but I couldn’t” She replied with a thousand years tiredness echoing in her voice.
He nodded his head as if he understood what she didn’t say. They told each other their stories, the day to day activities, those pleasant smiles and the tears followed by them, In a silent conversation. Silence was there to speak, words were never enough for them.
He looked around to pause and all of a sudden she disappeared. A tiny regret occupied his heart, he shouldn’t have shook his head. He knew, she has to return to the reality.
He has to return too, but he knew they will keep meeting like this, in the meadows where dreams meet reality.
He was satisfied, she was happy. She was satisfied, she wasn’t there in his life to create troubles.
While watching them vanish into the thick fog of reality, the meadows almost cried. For they knew, once they both wished and insisted Him to be with each other….
Meadows didn’t know, life is a step more than this greenery that brown bench and ‘love’.
He smiled and continued merging reality with eternity.
At that time, I wasn’t aware how life’d treat me. I was in school when I came home with my first hole. After repressing the pain while I had lunch with my family, I locked myself inside my room and bled for too long.
Then, the next day, I came home with two more holes. One on my upper thigh and the other one on my shoulder. A stinging pain sprout out of them that made my whole body, a wound.
The next day, after returning back home, I left my mother shouting and hustled towards my room while leaving a trail of blood on the white carpet. I slammed my bag on the bed and lifted my shirt in front of the mirror. Half a dozen holes were revealed that dotted my stomach and chest. It was hard, bleeding for hours that day. I needed someone to treat my wounds with gauze. Instead, they were left open. It took half the night to stem the flow of blood and I was exhausted. Excruciating pain was the price of healing.
In the morning my mom made my favorite pancakes for breakfast. I wished she’d have kissed me on the forehead instead of stuffing me with those delicious pancakes.
I returned home that day, more battered than usual, covered with holes from head to toe. I gazed inside my mother’s brown eyes, longing to see the reflection of my holes. Instead, they were filled with every other dilemma our family endured.
I locked my room that day, and stood beside the mirror with blood pit-pattering on the linoleum. The holes looked like tiny flickering tongues. A sucking wound on my back, square between my shoulder blades was hurting me the most. It was too wide, too deep and a gentle touch brought back the memory of my best friend at school. May be that’s why the wound was the worst.
I stood there for too long, dribbling blood on the surface of clean mirror and staring at my face. The taste of loneliness mixed with the sleepless night was bitter. I heard my family talking, my brothers fighting over stupid things. My mother knocked at my room’s door. She waited for an answer but silence was all she could hear while I struggled with my cries, cupping my mouth firmly with both hands. She screamed and called my dad.
I got up, wiped my eyes brutally with one hand while holding a knife in the other. After hiding it under the bed I slammed the door open. My eyes saw fierce expressions on their faces and their lips moved angrily but my ears heard nothing. A shrill sound as if a drill was making a hole in the wood echoed in my head.
After it was all over, I shook my head and locked the door, again. My steps felt heavy as I motioned towards the mirror. The two days old wounds sprang open. Blood spilled out of the crusty scabs that were peeled off.
In the morning, I left the bloodied bed sheets as they were and headed towards school with my head cast towards the ground. I came back that day with more holes but they didn’t hurt that much as they did before. Because, I made dozens of holes that mustered over my torso, to avoid pain from the ones given by others.
“Soon these holes will all turn into scars and they’d be the reminders of how tough I’m“, I thought. The light had started entering inside me, through my wounds.
I bled that day on my bed but the door was wide open. My parents passed by as I lay there, un-noticed, for they had their own monsters to fight with -and I had my own.
“She was not quite what you would call refined.
She was not quite what you would call unrefined.
She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”
That was the day I promised myself, that I’ll try to fix my daughter’s holes with gauze, made with love and care. But as they say, life is what happens to you while you are busy making ‘plans’.
Every one of us has to unfold one’s own myths.
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This 695 word story is written for Speak Easy. The task this time was to use “There was a time when things were different” as the first line and to give a reference to a photo that was of parrots. I should admit that, while writing this story, my mind started wandering in my own past and when I read my story now, it seems more like my real life story than fiction. I have decided to leave it unchanged, as it reminds me of my ‘fresh’ old wounds.
This story can be an end, or a new beginning of my writing career. I am getting married this coming Friday and life had been hard on me, lately.
Meet you after my wedding ! Miss me and pray for me, Please. Love you all.
Lies the soul absorbing light through the pierced wounds
Home of love invite to be the guest unknown
Paths to you are shown by trees long
I Search inside where you belong
Empty-handed, I still Roam.
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I don’t know if this photo prompt relates completely to my words or not but these were the thoughts that came into my mind when I first saw it. As I am feeling down these days too so couldn’t come up with anything creative. I hope you’ll bear me with that.
This poem is written in response to Daily Prompt and Friday Fictioneers. Click on the link to see other awesome entries this week.
He was with me like shadow under the Moonlit skies since I was a baby who’d been in this world for not more than a week. I was certain then, that walls of my room were blue and Lucy, the white cat hated me. And I knew that I shouldn’t cry when my Mom was already crying because she’d not pick me up.
When Mom’d hold me in her folded arms to feed me in the morning, I’d gaze at blue scars beneath her starlit eyes. Those scars’d change their colors and places daily and when I’d try to reach them she’d hold my tiny fingers in her soft hand and tears’d fall on my forehead. She’d whisper in my ear that we’d leave this place soon.
My dad’d smell like medicine when he’d hold me while he’d cut my Mom down with his words. He never left his habits and mom never left this place.
He’d sit beside me with a wooden face, covering my ears with his hands to block the shouts; blades with tiny bayonet pointed firmly at my heart.
I’d laugh when he’d tease me that I broke my head when I was thrown from the sky into the world. Mom never liked him and whenever I’d tell her about him she’d not answer. I’d start talking to him and Mom’d start crying.
We celebrated my 18 birthdays together and he was with me that day when dad brought some quaint people in our house. I heard shouts, dad’s cries were a pitcher of bitterness and mom’s quivering voice tasted of sacrifice.
Dad clamped his hand onto my wrist and pulled me through the lounge where Mom sat squeezed in a corner, mouth covered with hands and tears brimming through her opaque eyes.
Pain paralyzes my mind when doctors pierce needles in my arm and I see his shadow fading into the light of nothingness.
We all have to fade, as we all are shadows on the wall of time.
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This is my 333 words response to Trifecta Challenge. This weeks word was Quaint and we have to use its third definition ( unusual or different in character or appearance : ODD ) in our response. Feedback is always appreciated. Click on the badge to see other entries.
Who am I?Where am I ? Many questions bubbled onto the surface her mind as she opened her eyes. At first she couldn’t see anything, her vision was blurred with a thin white sheet of mist.
She was laying in a small room. A dim yellow light was trying to make her vision clear but it couldn’t. She tried to move her arms and after struggling for a while, they were in a position to let her sit with her back resting along the headboard.
A bouquet of withered old flowers was resting on the side table along with a tray of tablets. A fan was running slowly on the ceiling which could produce no air but only an unpleasant noise. Her bed was white colored, made of steel. Soon she figured out that she was in a hospital. But why ? What happened to her ? She searched for wounds on her body but couldn’t find any. She tried to move her body off the bed but she wasn’t able to move it. She tried to call out, words stuck in her throat.
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“Yes my darling I will take you both to the zoo in the evening” She spoke in her soft voice wrapped in love while driving the car.
“But we want to go now Mama” Both her twin kids who were the world to her were insisting.
“Today is your first day at school my Love, you can’t skip it. Mama promises you that she’ll take you to the zoo”
“Okay pinky promise?” They both forwarded their tiny hands with cute smiles on their faces.
She smiled and touched their fingers with her’s and kissed them both on their foreheads. She had tears in her eyes while watching them enter the school gate….Tears that are precious like white pearls in the ocean….like a mother’s love….like the first rain…..pure !
She turned back and was crossing the road when suddenly she felt herself in the air….the ground beneath her feet was gone and her mind blacked out.
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“How the hell am I supposed to let her live in my home?”
“She is still my wife, why can’t you understand that? Doctors said there are 1% chances of her coming out of the coma and that 1% chance saved her like a miracle.Where the hell is she supposed to go now?”
“I don’t know anything. I have given my 15 years to this home. I have been taking care of her kids for 15 years and now she is here to take control of my home? I can’t let this happen ever”
“She is not in a position of taking control of your house. She is on the wheel chair for God’s sake!! Let her live in a corner of our house. She won’t interfere in your matters, I guarantee that ! I know her……”
She heard a loud sound like someone has thrown a plate on the ground…..And she heard the rest of that too.
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“Ali?“
“Yes my love“
“Can we be more happier and satisfied than we are now? Can life be better than this?” She was staring at the countless stars on the dark black sky, glittering and glowing like her eyes.
“I don’t think so” He kissed her hand while looking at her and smiled.
“But it can be if you make me a cup of coffee right now?” she stared at his face where a naughty smile and pure love was gleaming.
“Okay but this is the last time”
“My darling wife I love you” He cried and She giggled.
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“Why is she here brother I don’t like her. You know mom told me that she was bad and she was never there for us when we needed her. I hate her”
“She was in a coma for 15 years ! She need us now”
She didn’t listen to her brother.
While leaving the room she saw her pulling the wheelchair towards her room holding a plate with two burgers in her hands.
She recalled, they loved burgers when they were kids.
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He is standing on a freshly made grave covered with red roses. He is crying hard with his hands stretched in the air. Why Allah? Why did you do that to my mother? No one needed her but I did. Why did you snatch the only happiness I had after 15 years? Why? Tears were flowing down his cheeks and collecting on his neck as he continued……
Here lies a wife and a mother who was best of both at one time. She returned to the world to have a second chance but cold truth and cruel realities didn’t let her avail it. Here lies a girl consumed by nothing but truth…Truth that can be like roses at one time and like thorns for the other. As they say,”Truth is rarely pure and never simple”.
**Please vote for me if you liked my poem,O’ Moon You Were The Spectator ! . For voting, Please click the following link :Speak Easy at Yeah Write.Read the other great entries too and vote for them. You can vote for total three entries. All entries are present at the bottom of the page.
White Shadows 