Waiting

She watched her favorite piece of crockery float away from her while she stood on the only visible chunk of land for miles at end. She had always loved water, dreamed of traveling south to the shore to see the beauty that was the ocean. But now she had lost everything to water, her family, her home, her belongings, and her life. Drenched to the bone with only the clothes on her back and an ache in her belly that was unmistakably hunger, she waited to be rescued. Day gave way to night and the sun took over again. And she’s still there, waiting.

A Nation On Its Deathbed

Yesterday she turned 63 though she looks much older than that, weak, feeble and frail. Socially ostracized, drowned in debts and flood water and mourning the loss of its off springs to extremists and foreign drone attacks, she is left on the mercy and kindness of others. Tears of blood are shed each passing day as she witnesses her impending doom. She can only be saved if her children unite against the powers bent on destroying her. Only they can bring her back to her former glory. For she is their motherland, Pakistan – the land that once resounded with songs of peace.

The Way Out

Ben Johnson couldn’t predict the future; he couldn’t even predict the next few hours’ weather. But at this point in life he needed to know what way fate would take him. The feeble attempts he made to fix the errors hadn’t really worked, they had just reinforced that he was a loser, a failure at everything he did. Defeated, he mixed up a cocktail and gulped it down, a drink of shame, humiliation and trepidation. He then sat down and waited. Waited for the drink of death to do its work.

Against All Odds, I Will Survive.

She lost her hair, she lost her confidence. She lost her husband, she lost her support. Yet she didn’t lose hope. ‘ I will survive’ was the mantra she kept on chanting, when all others who knew her knew she just had a few more weeks. Her doctors had stopped trying. To them, she was a lost cause. They thought it was wastage of valuable time and resources to carry on with her treatment, which wasn’t getting her any better. Her husband thought she was more trouble than she was worth and left her on her own. And yet she didn’t lose hope.

She was in the throes of the end stages of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. And she had less than a month to live. But she was putting up every form of resistance she could muster because she knew there was more to life than she had experienced. At twenty- seven, she was too young to die. There were lots of things she hadn’t experienced yet. Like the joys of motherhood, like living the life of an independent woman. But the doctors had already started counting her days. And with everyday she lived, she received a new blow on her consciousness, trying to arouse her from the false sense of well being she seemed to be in.

“I will survive”, she answered plainly to any one who asked her how she felt about her impending death. She still believed that, even when she contracted graft versus host disease after her bone marrow transplant. It was as if her body was rebelling against the very notion she was striving for. Her health was waning, but her spirit was not.

And then her body couldn’t take it anymore. It was battered and broken beyond repair, but her soul was as resilient as ever. Her friends told her she was being unjust to herself. She shouldn’t keep her hopes so high, ready to be dashed by the slightest miscalculation. And after going into relapse after relapse, she should know better than to pin her hopes on the unlikely. The doctors gave her a week. Maximum. They said anything beyond that would be a miracle.

She lived. For three more years. Long enough to prove her doctors, and her fellow patients and friends, wrong. And when she died she did so with a smile on her face and a gloating voice, proclaiming, “I told you I had more time. In the true sense of the word, I have survived.”

Empty

Her hand closed over the pendant, her knuckles turning white as she tightened her fist. She stared into emptiness, willing her soul into oblivion. But it was not to be. She was destined to live, even when he was dead. She didn’t have it in her to move on, to pick up and stitch back together the tattered pieces of her being, the shattered remains of her life. It was unfair, her having to live without him. Shouldn’t her soul have been killed with that knife wound? After all they were, like everybody said, two bodies, one soul. Why then hadn’t life been sucked out of her the moment it left his body. She might be alive in technical terms, but after him, she was just an animate dead body. Empty. Void.

Music That Tore In His Mind An Old Wound Open

Turning on the radio
He sat back to relax
But relaxation was one of the things
He wasn't meant to have.

The music didn't let him rest
instead it tore open
an old wound in his mind
about which he had never spoken.

The melodious tuneful music
was discordant to his ears,
Incurring terrible memories
of previous, by- gone years.

Every single word sung
made him remember the days
when their diminishing love
had led to parting o the ways.

She had told him that she loved him.
He told her, he loved her too.
But in his heart he knew it;
what she said was just not true.

There had been a time when they
couldn't live without each other.
But now the very thought of the past
made his body shudder.

The way the door had banged that day
was still ringing in his ears.
And even though he tried,
somehow he couldn't stop the tears.