An Ode to Shahid

“The world is full of paper
Write to me”, Shahid said.
But can I revive you
In mere words?

The broken flowers
That flew down to me from your land
Will they retain
The smell that must have
Lingered on your fingers?

There still lies
An empty cup at my sill
You promised to fill it to the brim
With stories of your winter mornings
I watch it struggle to contain
Droplets of the treacherous sun

An unfamiliar tune
Still meddles my head
From your rusty harmonica
I trapped that moment in a picture
But let you go
Will a letter help me
Get rid of that song in my dreams?

Under my breath
I still whisper in your tongue
Those names you taught me
How do you beckon a lover?
I wrote them over and over
But the door isn’t answered anymore

The stories are undone
The songs unravelled
The flowers, brittle, broken
I did write to you,
As an ode to Shahid
But the mail has lost its way
In the foggy nooks of time
Perhaps memory will show mercy
And rescind the leftover quiet
That renders my mourning
Asunder.

Imagine...

Imagine, cradling your babe
Gurgling at the sound of the twilight birds
Laughing at their ruckus,
Dancing to their songs
And suddenly going blind.

Imagine, walking across the street
To soothe a neighbour's incessant wails
At the loss of her only son
To the bullet gone astray
Your eyes stinging in the teargas
Your walking on the red snow
Only to find
That your own lies there
Riddled with a nation's hatred

Imagine, a chance
To run your fingers
Through your loved one's hair
Under the frozen cherry tree
From your childhood
Hand-in-hand
You take her along
Through those memories from yesteryears
Little did you know
That you would soon become
Nothing more than a memory, yourself

Imagine, walking out of home
To buy milk
For abu's morning nun chai
He has always liked it prompt
But you left him waiting
Never to return

Imagine, knitting a bonnet
For the little life within you
That could never be wrapped
In anything more
Than your cold, lifeless body

Imagine all of this
And imagine it to be
Every day, every hour, every minute
Of your existence
Stuck with that pungent odour
Of the charred remains
Of your ancestral house

Can you smell it yet?
My collective conscience is ablaze.