Along with my father’s soul travelled
My mother’s smile to the arena with no name
Perhaps, in the gallery of eternal
With the fold of her scarf, she would mop the
River of eyes, to appease the questioning
Gaze of a child delving into her sunken eyes
Searching for his mother, the one whose
Smile made moon envious
And whose singing could
Make the seven seas cease for peace.

Here sitting I see but a woman
With the skin and voice of my mother
Their eyes too share a look
Only that this voice does not at all sing
Only that this skin has wrinkles
Each speaking of inferno that is pain
Only that in these eyes I see but a stranger
With heart shattered by the blade of death
And body engulfed in the silent ocean of grief
Perhaps that night my father’s soul travelled
To the gallery of eternal, her’s too did
Leaving behind her body in strange motion.

I held her hand in mine, tender as a crescent
If it was my mother, she would hold mine too
”You see those glittering”
She would say, pointing at stars
“They are holes in the heaven
Through which at night souls peep, to have
Sight of the beloved ones down here” but she wasn’t
Now, she speaks only the language of grief
Her gaze fixed perfectly at nothing
As though seeing beyond the roof of earth
Through the holes to heaven, where my father’s soul
And perhaps her’s too, dwell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Klemen Vrankar on Unsplash