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.
Palms together Cradling the chakra of your heart You give of your essence to the world You pray for healthfulness For the fruition of dreams and things The prayer travels from your lips Like a flock of migrating starlings It moves with purpose and with aim Of ardent supplications
It then joins hands with other wraiths With other ghosts in the gold-green ether Of immaculate petitions and pleas That linger in grace fulfilled, replete And also those that hopeful remain Floating like fireflies, lighting the way For other prayers that have lost their way In the cosmos of blessed invocation
Palms together Facing the chakra of my solar plexus I send my own missive into the universe There are no words to this appeal My gut sends the scriptless message for me I’m not quite sure of what it is I close my eyes and soundlessly Wordlessly, I send out my energy To take on what form it will In the maya of our collective dreams.
There’s a face in the shadows Downcast, serene A quiet glow drapes The rest of her As she sits cross-legged On the floor She holds the cosmos in her prayerful hands I want to see the face so full of quiet grace I want to understand Where the woman gets Her stillness from I tilt my head to see More clearly And then two shimmering orbs Rise from under their lidded veils I hold my breath I’m no longer Watching from the outside in I float I glide out of the place I’m light as a feather I rise up there’s no tether To time and space To anything I have ever known I float on And I drop The sharp edged angst that I had held In my chest and in my head And it falls Away from me I stretch out my arms I rise and rise Into the infinity Of those glimmering eyes Through twin portals To my paradise.
Mahvash Mohtadullah 