Daily Times

A despondent building smeared with despair

With all its doors and windows

Barred with curtains and fears

As if vicious dogs and vipers

Were positioned as guards

Over the emptiness within,

Where my lonely steps in the corridors

And coughs clamoured and echoed.

The barren yellow walls

With paint peeling off

Like vigour from my heart

Became pregnant with shadows

To harass me with fears sneaking out of my skin

How my spirit decayed

Constrained within the asphalt straitjacket.

A dagger which I held close to my chest

While it sucked all red waters.

I aspired for angels in the tomb

But muck sprouted forth like petroleum

Through my pain inspiring designs.

Now I run out of my prison

Casting back my skin of the solitary serpent

Into the world crowded

To meet the old wrinkled fellow

Held together by his clothes and memories,

To witness the man who makes out of tea and milk

Fluid gold in little cups

With scents flying off its surface like birds,

To gape at the leaves layered with dust,

And walk in the street,

Named behind the damsel, Anarkali,

Where people ride from everywhere

Turning it into a festival.

The monastery of my solitude tumbles down

No flesh wanders through it

To feed its famished walls

No illusions slither up and down

Lusting after memories of my presence

The vampire of my youth—solitude—

Dies away duped on its own darkness.

The writer is a student of English Literature at Government College University, Lahore and can be reached at rosseautolstoy5@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, December 6^th 2017.