The cottage is old and the garden trees have overgrown,
The long missed smells of mother’s food…
Oh, what joy to eventually come home!

Shrill morning breaks to the call of crows
As the sun rises from behind prison walls.
A reminder yet again, Light alights in sleeping hours,
Daylight brings hell, the unvoiced tortured wails
Which cry out for the Light.
But it plays tantalizing games at night
And leaves the mornings in the hand of the jailor.
No friend, no foe, no merchant nor sailor
Will ever come to see…
We’re alone in our six square feet cells
Us, and the haunting drum roll of the surrounding sea.

The sky has turned a bluish grey.
I hear the voices of the city -
Words, music, traffic, train,
And shrill laughter floating in the lane.
The bells have begun to ring;
An old woman
Crouching in a corner of her terrace
Blows the conch thrice.
A white cat ambling by the road
***** its head to listen,
But deeming the prayers and noise the same
Continues in its search for game.
On a fifth floor balcony, a girl watches
The silhouettes of birds flying back home.
She has her own music,
The kind that shuts you out and sets you free.
Temporarily.

A train whistles in the distance
Carrying lives afar and beyond.
The evening grows dark, the moon rises,
The wind lulls and blows;
And life goes on…

I woke up to a knotted feeling in my chest. I call it the feeling of smelling rain in the air. To my left, a man sleeps curled under the blanket, and beyond him, morning opens its eyes behind the curtains. The heaviness in my chest is an accumulation of many years. Like Sam and Dean’s memory flashes of Hell, it visits me as a reminder of monsoon bursts, evening walks, prolonged… death throes, and rain. It always passes soon enough. They were never much for lingering. And so I, feeling bottled up and inadequate, open my laptop to cry.

*So long as the ghosts of the years survive the sea of change, so long shall the will to live return, again and again. For to be able to hold such pain and joy within a single, humble being is a miracle as spectacular as the sun shattering awake against the mountains. And it is the desire, nay, the hunger, to tear one’s self asunder in search of the holy impact that shall drive man to dream. To feel. To hope.