I sit with my tea The silence sits with me Deafeningly Piercing my eardrums With its wordless cacophony
It has made its forever home In the lounge where I now sit alone It’s been there a while Years of rooting itself in place The air, the space Is soundless, still Like the world in night’s numbing vigil I look around for something Anything to cut through the dead air Its atoms conspiring With the silence that sits everywhere
And then I see it, a little plume Floating, dancing in the room From my mug As the tea steams up Severing the bond of silence and air The desolate, deflated, joyless pair Their essence once filled With people now gone The moist vapor wafts in Reaching into spaces Where images, reminiscences Lie inert, forsaken Loosening, thawing, warming them
I take a sip of my tea I feel my spine tingle Familiarly As I’m wrapped in the arms Of rekindled memories.
July has come round again Another birthday It’s been twelve whole years Since you went away A decade and two years it’s been And I want to tell you how these years Have touched me After you said your last goodbye
The first two were unhappy, desolate I had regular nightmares I’d go to sleep thinking of you And of those last few difficult days The ritual memory was oddly cathartic Even as it hurt, cutting deep Ripping my heart out every night Before I lay me down to some semblance of sleep
And then through some blessed interlacing Of our two realms you came to me in a dream You were well again You were whole and you were happy And I held your hands Even as you held mine We laughed with joy as we whirled around
And since then My broken heart has gently Laced its red-blue pieces together With gold and purple lines I now find you in visions and dreams That are more serene So real, that when I awake You are somehow still around A heartbeat away, an echo warm and sweet A lingering touch upon my cheek
I look at your picture on my phone My heartstrings wrap around your form It’s the next best thing to perfection In our world of love and loss And so here you are shimmering Lighting up my memories again Twinkling eyes smiling away Making me catch my breath As I whisper dearest, a happy birthday.
I hear the leaves rustle in the breeze The gust picks up slowly, gradually I hear the rattle of a window The one that lies loosely in its frame Like a watchful sentry Announcing the entry Of a wayward breeze That rolls in through its screen To knock upon the door At the end of the corridor
I walk out of my bedroom into the lounge The sentinel window Is now trembling, recoiling Rattling its pane Warning of rain That will soon moisten Its face; gushing Rushing, tearing The dust off old memories Renewing the pain
I see the first flash of lightning and then The thunder breaks The storm has arrived I look at it through the window Now lying quietly in its frame Soon the glisten of its pane Swells into a stream flowing Down silently as I sit quietly With the sweet ache Of old memories again.
I see the swing again Not the same but very like The one I used to fly upon A lifetime ago, I’m caught In a clutch of rememberings It was my first day of school I was the quiet one, so shy The teacher would be inclined To ask another little girl To take me under her fledgling wings A few minutes before The 11 o’clock bell would ring All kinds of dreadful things Would grip my little heart It would hammer in its cage As time closed upon the break Even as I rushed towards her desk Don’t forget! please don’t forget! To pick a friend for me today!
I’d come back home tired out My little head would pound and pound I couldn’t understand it then But I would go out and reach For the sturdy ropes of the swing As it rocked gently to and fro Waiting to hold me in Its reassuring cradling I’d swing and swing and swing up high Chase out all the daytime angst With every forward rush With every surge up to the sky I’d breathe in anew and fortify Until my sore heart soared again I couldn’t understand it then This self-soothing, this consoling
Life went on, its ebb and flow I duly shifted to my swing That I always found along the way Into its vital comforting The whoosh of the wind a lullaby A hypnotic whisper in my ears To let my troubles fall away To just fly and fly and fly up high As I kicked off into the liquid sky
When you went away I stopped looking for my swing That hollowness, that grief Those are things the lulling breeze Could not fill and cannot ease Their echoes ring, as they wring At heartstrings that pull them in I will not let them fall away Steeped, replete with memories I now carry all of these Forever and eternally Unwilling to set them free Upon a beclouding and benumbing breeze.
The day you went away Something died inside me too I thought that with time In the pithy wisdom of poets And cure-alls of self-help books In the endless cycle of the days That I’d come back to life To some semblance of pulsing life But I didn’t And that’s ok Isn’t the end of self the next terminus anyway?
The formidable ego that relentlessly keens For fantasies of euphoric times Trapped in snow globes Frozen for life Crashing like cannon balls Into raw hearts that survive That part of me died But that dead part of me Buried somewhere In the thick of my atoms that ricochet And my lungs that tirelessly inhale Is now also my quiet side A stoic, eternal, abiding thing Cloaked in The resolute infinity Of ceaseless serenity
In that sepulcher of my being There is no distraction, no noise No daunting end-times tunnels of light The lifeless part of me Is nerveless, unfaltering Impervious to everything Everything but the little flame You left behind when you went away Glowing softly just beyond The stillest, deadest part of me For me to gently find my way.
There’s a sweet pain in my chest A bloom of soft memories in my head They hold hands for a time Making me smile for a little while Charging then to pierce my eyes Awkward friends This ache in my ribs And these recollections They make me weep And yet all the while Hugging each atom of my being Places and spaces inside of me Phantom-greyed, blue-bruised, bleak Stark in the darkness of old scars and stings Fledgling losses, crushed hearts and things They hold them close the vital lot Nostalgia and loss begot I have a tender-sweet ache in my chest I wait for my pin-pricked eyes to attest To love that was gentle, to the fierce kind Rapt in reminiscence they fill my mind.
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.
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your soft smile We’ve said things to each other we didn’t mean Tearing and splitting the vital seams Of the fabric of our togetherness I know that I have felt desolate, helpless We have sat in silence, cold as frost The glow of our closeness long since lost Somewhere along life’s bewildering way I let your warm hand slip away
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your gentle smile
Through the years we have journeyed on Along the same path but each on our own Forged by our children, we treaded their dreams Only seeing shadows of you and me Still together we walked into middle age But it’s been a while since I really saw your face It’s been a few years since the air around Was filled with your familiar scent and your sound Somewhere, somehow I lost the quickening string That bound us together through thick and through thin
I know we haven’t talked in a while I know I haven’t seen you wear your lovely smile
But I know you’re still here, your pulse still beats warm Even as we’ve both whipped up raging storms They’ve whirled inside, while we’ve pulled away The terrible loneliness adding to the fray I know that we are distances apart But I can still feel you in the depths of my heart Let me find you once again in the mists Of sepia memories, reminiscences Let me hold your hand as I once did before Let us walk together, in step once more
I lost sight of you, dearest for a while Let me love you again, let me make you smile.
I see my shadow lengthen With the ebbing of the day I feel it suck up all the sadness From the bowels of the earth With its purple, glistening hoard Of melancholia and hopelessness I move ceaselessly, restlessly I will my never-stopping feet To sever the tortured bond That my swelling shade has formed With the darkening world around But my shadow just spreads out Ever further on the ground It suckles at night’s dreary breast Absorbing all her suffering So that nothing should remain In earth’s mighty store of pain With its ravening tentacles My twilight shadow reaches in Never faltering in its aim It will not stop it will not rest Until it has gorged itself On a sorrow that is infinite It’s bloated edges Endlessly dredge The gloom from earth’s wounded veins My shadow ripples and it writhes Waning only when daylight Breaks the tragic coupling Of the shades and sadness of nighttime.
My temples throb Like the devil has set up shop In their wefts of flesh and bone There he threshes His wheat and corn Brimstoned and fire shorn Screaming out his brutal song I’m enmeshed Tied inside my throbbing head Forced to see, ingest and feel The devilry Making me curse Making me keen In time to the pounding drum And the terrifying never-ending hum Of the devil’s threshing machine
I try to think Break out of the infernal links That tie me down inside my head My raging, aching, splitting head But the devil sings His strangely hypnotizing song And I stop Trying to slip Into my veins Away, away from the devil’s shop From that wretched, that exhausting pain And I stay The convulsions hold me in their sway Aaaa-gonizing me Beating, pulverizing me Crescendoing with my memories And I sit with my pounding head As the throb in my temples counts the dead.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 