Shattered. The trembling hands, trying to recover the strength they once had.....
STORY
Smashed into a million pieces,
The mirror never seizes to reflect.
The fragments will remain,
There within you.
Shattered. The trembling hands, trying to recover the strength they once had; and in this moment, when all was fragile, she did believe in that very strength, somewhere within her, it was just not showing up maybe.
It’s longer than it ought to be.
Seconds take minutes to pass
Minutes take hours to pass
And hours, they take entire days to pass,
But pain, it stays there. Stagnant.
The floor was strewn with smithereens of the glass, which had fallen lovingly from her hand. It seemed so familiar. The pieces, that lay contended, didn’t cease to reflect. Reflect on her. Reflect in her fading grey irises. Closing her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, trying to hush down the rapidly beating heart, pushing back the stray auburn strands of hair behind her ears and calming the strains on her forehead, she lifted the velvety maroon quilt steadily. Straightening her straining neck to sit up, she struggled with several bone crushing aches, many at a single moment. It was hard to see if any of her part was spared form the agony she was going through.
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Everything is so difficult now.
By name, by thought, by nature.
There is an anchor,
It’s weighing me down,
In the depths of obscurity.
I now live, where darkness prevails.
“You should eat at least half of it,” begs mother. Father pleads the same with his eyes. She tries to swallow whatever little she has in her plate and every time, it felt like moving mountains. Nausea starts to settle in, trying its best to throw out what took ages to get in. To give up is the only solution. There is little left to fight for now and she takes leave from the table. All this had led to tremendous lost in her weight with an added gift of hair thinning.
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It’s bitter,
And the air, it’s toxic.
It’s too difficult to live.
And too difficult to die
Let’s make it easy,
And hang in between
The two tides.
The weekly appointments had already burdened her to walk through so many people, the repellent, and odour-filled passageways, face the distressing and unsettled conversations between the doctor and her mother, and a few murmurs from her desolate side. The tablets, maybe three at a time, were an appreciation gift, which too were hard to gulp down. The antibiotics had the magic of whizzing the head and alter the entire body’s mechanism. No problem, what else could be expected. It took a minute or two of staring at the silver of tablet’s packet before cracking it and unveiling the capsule and its journey towards the mouth. Sometimes, it was too hard as even after drinking two or more glasses of water, the capsule/s decided to stay on the tongue and hence poison therein. The face cripples to dilute the effect but no that doesn’t helps. It feels just so good to imagine, only to imagine to throw out all of these.
*************
Oh people,
For a moment,
Let the mind be at peace.
Yours and mines.
But people...
The things were taking time to normalize, but it was made worse by people she had to deal with in her university. She didn’t want to take part in any of the conversations but to sit aside in peace. During this time, there were people who had the audacity to take advantage of her silence and mentally afflict her. They barely knew she was already fighting for getting her life back on track again. The few people she had trusted were also there to betray her, not in obvious ways but they did. It was quite a work to ignore them and work on herself. The lectures were monotonous; the mind would wander far away, only to return to noise and more headaches. The brisk walks out of the campus were refreshing.
*************
It’s when the calm settles.
After all that catastrophe,
The dreadful spells,
The venomous backdrops.
It’s time to let go of
What stands in the way of healing.
She looks up at the night sky which is drabbed in the silver of moonlight and closes her eyes for a moment. After such a long time, she felt she was breathing in something serene. She had suffered and survived, primarily for the sake of her parents, who had been there, who had seen her battle and lived with her in every moment of pain and who gave courage to walk this road. Even though all was not well, but things were getting better. Calmness in her existence was what she looked for now.
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Reminisces.
It’s when you know
That you won’t drown.
Although there is this void,
But what remains, remains.
It’s always difficult to put into words what one has gone through. But if she could explain that in terms of some dystopia: “It was tiresome to even think about walking barefoot on the vast, barren and repulsive path that lay ahead. It waited. It seemed as if it had always wanted to crucify her soul with every step she took on it. Her existence was a burden on it. The eerie silence was deafening her. She had to choose between a stagnant death and a death that was painful yet exhilarating, death that never witnessed her or a death that awaited her presence. The wind breathed life into her creamy velvety strands of hair; they swayed across her emaciated face. It was becoming bitter; everything was becoming bitter, the cold, and the agony. She could feel the stinging cold seeping deep into her bones, making her ache profusely.”
