A Sigh

A sigh! She expressed an emptiness,

A hollowness in her eyes;

A worthlessness in her thoughts;

A vacuum in her heart.

Everything was breaking down.

Nobody could bind them up.

Everything was falling down.

It was vain, building up.

A sigh! She couldn’t weep.

There were no tears

Welling up in her eyes.

The day was sunny

And everyone happy.

Buzz… in the garden,

Flowers fluttered in spirits.

Vrooms… busy were the streets.

A sigh! From the darkest corner,

Where the used useless things were thrown,

Beside the broken earthen pots,

Amidst the heap of polythene.

The sigh escapes much after

The tedious maternal prompting

And terrifying paternal manipulation.

A sigh of total indifference.

A sigh! It was like a restless kid

Unwrapping a priceless gift,

Which was broken and shattered

As it slipped down from his hands.

A merciless tearing!

She remembers a hand here,

An eye there, a neck, a chest,

A nose that touched the navel.

Distorted faces, many of them,

Faint, mixed-up smells,

The sweat and the wet bedspreads.

The recurring extremes

And the mere exercises.

Silenced weeps and

Momentary deaths.

A silence after silence.

A sigh again! From the memories,

Aged, distorted, yet alive.

Images recreated, celebrated

And usually misinterpreted,

Move here and there, on air.

Still crouching and crawling,

With talking wounds in and out,

The thing remains; sighing!