It is the bee buzzing round the last summer flower It is the lightest drizzle on a scorching day It is the rainbow after it has stormed for hours That has ravaged everything in its wake It is the bright little smile on the face of a child Selling elastics and incenses on the street When you roll down your window at a traffic light When you leave her with a kind word or three It is the weed growing through age-worn furrows In a cement sidewalk, swaying in the breeze It is the faithful, steady unbroken flame That warms the heart of a dying candle It is the single green leaf on a tree that’s ailing It is the silent prayer That leaves your lips Even when all about you is despair It is the next step ahead on a broken path Eyes lighting up a horizon that has fallen dark Hope is sometimes just the littlest spark
It is feeling like you just can’t go on anymore It is also your blood gushing stronger than ever before It is the frame that you pull out of a drawer Into which you put photos of those that are gone It is brushing your hair Pulling it into a bun It is clipping your nails When all’s said and done It is reading this verse Sitting alone in the quietness It is laying yourself down in your bed of sighs It is your throat constricting, you breaking inside It is also awaking to thunderous skies Their wetness brimming in your aching eyes Mangled hearts that still throb in the ebb and the flow It is you that’s still here Though you’ve bled and you’ve bruised Hope pearlesceht strings through all of those.
When I look inside of you Into the very depths of you Do you know what I see? Two stormy mushroom clouds Looming wetly in your eyes Grey harbingers of doom They roil and linger in the room I’m afraid; I’m mesmerized Then Boom! Everything is gone In the ferocity Of your atom bomb Atomic, Anatomic, Catatonic The fearsome stillness after the storm Your atoms ravaged out of form
When I look inside of you I see vanquished fields beneath The clouds of smoke and acid rain I see the skeletons of trees The mucid ashes of flowers and bees They were rustling, bustling, hustling Their atoms dancing merrily You plucked each atom from its orbit In the fierceness Of your tragedy Calamity, Catastrophe You heaved your mighty weight upon it Smote your world beneath your feet
When I look inside of you I see the heaving cosmos Suns and planets whirling, swirling In the vast blue-blackness Meteors like fireworks Blazing exultant trails Shimmering tails, Star-burnished sails The firmament a holy grail You crush the heavens in your fist You flick your angry blue-bruised wrist The sky comes crashing down Molten lava on the ground Seismic vapor all around I can taste it in my mouth
But when I look at you from here You sit there statue-still Not an eyelash moves at all You are transparent, mystical Ethereal, Apparitional But within Clandestine, Hidden There are raging storms Carrying sand and ice alike I feel a chill in my bones And all of hell’s feverous might And all the while you look at me Your skin shrouded in serenity While in a loop, relentlessly You break and shatter on the inside.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 