Wait

When your limbs restlessness becomes synonymous with you
When your reasoning becomes a Phoenix,that  falls in love with its ashes
When your heart leaps where you cannot catch it
When the eyes melts the distances and looks beyond what is there
When you think the unthinkable and start building yourself around it
When you become unbearable for your own self
When the time stops and you start passing by
A good wait is when you loose sight of why were you waiting, your hearts leaps die into the uncomfortable twists inside you, your limbs give way, you see with unseeing eyes,  your soul stops speaking, drenching itself into numbness
........you make everything wait, to wait for the time to tick again for you...

Dedicated to (self) pity

When it reduces itself to nothingness...

When people are not able to see it in broad daylight

When its own soul walks all over it

When it gets placed not as a lamp stand next to the door, but as a mat outside the door

When the dust that is shooed out of the house, refuses to touch it

When the noise inside comes out with an intensity that deafens every possibility of life within it, but people dont hear it, for them its like the irritating squeals of the mice when the darkness dawns

When the eyes see and disgust at its own image, and it becomes those blurred lines in the memory

When these blurred lines get cobwebs, and entangle everything that comes its way

When it reduces itself to an object,  looses what all it has and dissolves in something so sublime as each prayer in a heartbeat around it beats a rhythm .... wish it was not there...

When the reason for what it was.... wishes with all intensity.... wish it was not there...

......and then it shrouds its evil eyes, scheming breath ....its treacherous soul in the blanket of night and disappears in the land where red, green all appear the same

After a While

After A While

©1971 Veronica A. Shoffstall

After a while you learn

the subtle difference between

holding a hand and chaining a soul

and you learn

that love doesn't mean leaning

and company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn

that kisses aren't contracts

and presents aren't promises

and you begin to accept your defeats

with your head up and your eyes ahead

with the grace of woman,

not the grief of a child

and you learn

to build all your roads on today

because tomorrow's ground is

too uncertain for plans

and futures have a way of falling down

in mid-flight.

After a while you learn

that even sunshine burns

if you get too much

so you plant your own garden

and decorate your own soul

instead of waiting for someone

to bring you flowers.

And you learn that you really can endure

you really are strong

you really do have worth

and you learn

and you learn

with every goodbye, you learn...

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman",The Second Sex-Simone De Beauvoir

Winter

Sitting at my door step, i look at the woman in front of me squatting on her knees busy chopping vegetables. She makes a beautiful picture in her white sari dotted with pink flowers, with a great mountain in the background, lush green, fed by the early monsoons.

She is narrating her childhood story with a twinkle in her eyes, about how she used to climb trees and bring kafal home and how her grandfather used to give her a dhela as a gift sometimes. I just get lost in the twinkle of her eyes and her smile, a rare eruption on her once beautiful face now hidden behind the criss cross lines of age.  I give out a sigh, as I am not used to handling so much love inside me, and i release it to mingle with the cool breeze around, thanking someone, that sometimes I have something to share. She notices the sigh and curses me, which pierces the warmth that encircled me and shattering it into pieces and throwing me back into reality. I notice her cursing her fate to have such an ungrateful, ill mannered daughter who cannot even sit and talk to her mother, who cannot be happy with their mothers happy memories.

She starts fussing around the house, over things that I find immaterial, that no one notices and take up to be their right. When her husband wipes his unclean hands on the curtain, or her son puts his shoes close to her Pooja which she hates, she ends up washing everything again again. She washes even when the snow mercilessly keeps telling us that the winter inside us can also be felt outside. Just that I have given up and she has not, she is constantly scrubbing and cleaning, washing away the dirt, holding her ground fiercely against the arrogant and violating winter. I look at her sometimes awe inspired with her grit and sometimes pitying her, what is she washing, she will never be able to wash the rusted half century old bondages, or the shackles of her birth.

 Today the sun had shone after a long time, giving hope but went away too soon, making me aware of the chill even more bitterly.The ominous mountain roars suddenly struck with lightening, laughing at the captives.

I dream of two shadows, not distinct from each other, runing, over kafal trees, over the mountain, floating with the clouds and experiencing bliss, with the music of ones own laughter. One of the shadow puts a hand in the pocket finds an old coin, it seems to be fake, she throws it away with all her force, it hits something strong but it seems to crackle due to the force.

I open my eyes, I see her with her face shining in the dim light of the home made chimin. She smiles at me sharing with me the bliss, anand.