Ashes

 

Ashes

A combustor, your heart is

Bursting open it reveals

Flames and cracks of

A fuming love;

They say love is pain,

It indeed is

To be loved is a boon

To love is pain;

The pain, it seeps through

To your veins and unblocks

The pathways from your

Heart to each bit of your body,

Reaching every muscle, 

Every bone, every bit of

Your ever-wrecking soul

And then it spreads numbness

Like a snake's poison - 

Paralysis of your legs

And hands and a brooding

Heart, leaving you stiff.

They say love is nothing

But a lump in your throat

The grief that swells up

And collects itself in pockets

That hang loose in the dark

Hole behind your shrinking throat.

It leaves you speechless

Seizing away the words you

Harbored to let out how you feel

You feel you don't deserve

That what you didn't yet get,

So you don't leave pores

For it to seep in, carefully

Covering up the love within.

But you forget to cover up

Your scars, those writhing 

Holes of dark blue blood.

People get scared of scars

So they stay aloof

'Cause they're already tired 

Of feeding the scars in 

Their own wounded souls.

Then what is love?

Love is when you feel like

Seeping into the scars

Of another, even when you're

Tending yours, and 

Still you don't get tired.

But why weren't you loved?

Maybe your scars are more

Frightening, that no one

Would dare to stop by

And take a good look.

A sea of love to give

But it all goes into empty

Spaces of shallow air

Staying there in the air

It mocks gravity, you and

Your very existence;

Nevertheless, "don't ever

Stop giving that love,

'Cause that's the only sign

Of your heart being alive"

When the hearts around you

Wear and worn out

Yours would live still, 

For it'd never stop seeking.

Love is all that yellow yoke

Within the hard white eggshell

Imprisoned?

Trapped?

Or being at home?

The answer is yours.

But one thing's for sure,

That yellow yoke waits

Either to be released, or

To become a new being

Either of this would happen.

Either, someday somebody

Would find the shell in the

Corner, break it open

And it would pour out

And be free to the end.

Or, the world would heat 

The shell up, suppressed

It would hatch into a new

Being, the redemption

That follows when love

Changes its own being.

Is grief that new being?

That which you thrust 

Into holes with blue covers

Pretending it doesn't exist?

That which you cover up

And walk 'resurrected'

Pretending to be strong

In a play of 'redemption'?

Yet all the while, it lumps

Up in your throat, looms

Over your head, waiting

Patiently to knock you over

To reduce you to ashes.

Then there you are, in the

Ashes, struggling to pick

Up pieces of yourself

To be born again, like

The phoenix that tricked death

But you'd not be the phoenix,

But the worm that escaped

Death despite being in the fire,

Eating the ashes, you'd

Crawl back to life.

                                    - Vinaya Mary