This is a poem about a woman who hasn’t even properly woken up from the five blurred stages of grief & is still trying to find her footing to leave her room & go out to receive the honour of her husband from the army who recently passed away as a martyr. This is a poem of halves,

Half shrivelling lotuses of faraway seas, 

half mirroring oasis of barren deserts; 

Half autumn in all its terrifying glory, 

half lifeless, stark white winters; 

Half abandoned houses, 

half open windows; 

Half wars, 

half epic folk lores; 

Half you & me, 

half us.

The scars scarlet vermillion leaves, stay

on my forehead from torn pages of yesterday,

Like an unread library’s worth of forsakenness

In a world full of people who would rather have 

dust & blood,

than ink on their hands;

Aching dully, as if reminding me 

Of how grief comes in waves

Like a river of dried up blood 

That had nowhere to go, 

So it went to God instead;

Begging, bargaining, bellowing

For something that never belonged to me in the first place.

The freshly cut abrasions on my wrist

shimmer like liquescent sundowns

From broken glass bangles & bent plastic hope,

Instead of granting me a moment of peace

alone with my pain,

So I could sit, have some coffee 

With the shadows of my suffering

To at least try to understand thir dark side,

instead of simply waiting for them

to heal by witchery,

They keep scratching

on the forget-me-not blue bruises on my skin, 

As if saying, 

“Remember, you still have to live” 

Do I get a choice, 

I ask? 

But they keep silently knocking, mocking, gawking

As my lungs keep struggling for each breath 

in an atmosphere full of fresh air. 

Mirror mirror on the wall,

Who once was my friend doesn’t recognise me at all

She says I have changed, 

I say, she has. 

But deep down I know, 

Everything I touch now turns arctic ice cold blue 

The colour of stupefying, mortifying, crucifying grief 

That no fragment of sky ever blends into, 

that which even the horizon is a li’l afraid of; 

So I gently trace the reflection of the corners of my face

Worn & weathered by wicked winds of time & fate 

Trying to remember how different things were 

Trying to imagine how different things could have been

Worthlessly on a midsummer afternoon.

The knots on my fuchsia Bandhani saree 

don’t laugh as loudly these days, 

The colossal silver jhumkas dangling till my neck 

Have become quite introverted too 

Like a friend who didn’t know what to say 

When you cried on their shoulders 

The night it rained catastrophically

So they became familiar strangers instead

For the rest of your moonless monsoons;

My ankle bells keep their melodies to themselves

And a deepened, inflamed skin impression sits

Where a ring once precious to me than life itself

glimmered in a garden of sunrises

like molten marigolds

And even the rusty autumnal breeze behaves

Around the hem of my flowery sundresses, 

Which are still learning to keep their flair within limits;

Or maybe, just maybe,

Everything else is still the same, 

Just the spring in my step, 

Has dawned into a never ending winter

The kind that renders every leaf, every cloud, every road, 

lifeless and covered in stunning, 

bewitching white villages of November snow. 

But today I don’t have the time, 

To listen to the whims of the voices in my head, 

The ghosts in my heart

Today is a map of empty streets & blank milestones, 

And I keep walking by the light of a distant, dying star 

Towards a hall full of people who will never know

Whose mistake they’re paying for 

Just like me, 

Just as scraped, scathed and scarred 

In honour of someone who took half their hearts

along when they left, 

Leaving behind a voodoo doll of a life

With crosses for eyes, buttons for noses

And no lips to smile.

For the first time in what looks like forever, 

I built a feeble dam of kohl

around the window of my eyelids 

With trembling fingers 

And myriads of shades of pink

bloom on my ashen face 

Like primaeval sun rays of spring

Hand painting the whole skyline coral & gold

Dear mirror mirror on the wall, 

I don’t wish to know who’s the fairest of ’em all; 

Can you be my friend again for just a day? 

If not for me, then for him, please don’t let my face betray

For all eyes would be on me, 

When I walk down another aisle of my life today

This time not towards, but away from him

In honour of the price he paid, I paid, we paid 

And the one that I will pay

for the rest of what’s left of my life.

Ask me how it felt 

When even the gods quietly watched

my wound bleed to death

Until it was reborn as an Orion shaped scar 

Twinkling on the lines of my trembling palms 

As if reminding me how Osiris,

the god of the afterlife

Was waiting to walk me home

To a meadow of wish granting dandelions 

Long after I’m no more

And in that moment, all I wished for 

Was more;

More courageous, more colourful, more carefree

For not all heroes ask for superpowers of flying, 

Some walk, in slow, small, shushed steps 

towards a life harder to live rather than not, 

And they are the ones who move you.

Ask me how I knew, 

That my flowers shrivelled & sold their souls

long before they could find a place 

In between the pages of his childhood diary

The one he outgrew emotionally

but never grew apart from 

I knew, for their crushed petals

sent me little sealed envelopes

Of my fragrance on it, with his name.

Ask me what his name meant, 

In the midst of mornings of latent meanings 

& the dust of evenings of inexplicit feelings 

His name was a ray of light too stubborn for the fog to dim, 

It fought with every last ounce of luminescence,

To survive on some faraway planet of perpetual winters, 

Beautiful, but not liveable; 

And I was once again left alone, 

shivering, shaking, shrieking 

For the kind of warmth

only death’s kiss could gift a struggling soul.

And when I entered that hall, that aisle, 

Those eyes that I so feared did actually look at me, 

But what they saw was remnants of courage taking baby steps

Scrounged up from an entire sky’s worth of freedom to walk away 

They saw ages of not leaving the comforting dimness of my room 

For a moment under blinding lights 

that smelt of scorching summer afternoons 

They saw angry eyes that asked questions, 

eyes that couldn’t hide complaints 

And at the same time, eyes that were only still adjusting 

to their newfound love of darkness.

For not all bravery looks like gunshot wounds to the chest, 

Some are tainted by profound, pernicious, perfervid pain, 

And despite it all, 

getting up to see another day, 

every single day. 

They saw my fate lines creased from the weight of badges & medals 

holding someone else’s name,

They saw my stars look down on me with molten pride 

pearling under their dreamless eyelids

They saw a woman dressed in a novella of emotions

Even she couldn’t read till the last page herself

Wearing the perfume of his mother’s colourless sunsets 

Walking in the heels of his sister’s lonesome morns

And keeping safe a wounded smile his father lent me, 

to go through today like a normal human being 

As everyone stood up, 

raised their hands in salutes & looked at me, 

They saw love

a little defeated here, a little damaged there, 

But pure as pure can be, for that day that was all I was, 

First, foremost, forever

A half-human version of love, 

Against which all else is simply surrendered.