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 [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, December 6th 2017.