For the first time in two years,
I fear the +91, the grisly ISO –
my mother’s name on my screen.
For every ring bears
a name burning or buried,
for every hello echoes
the baleful carnage.
For each time I wish
her goodbye, I dread
the eventuality –
the haunting ache of
stripping ‘when’ from the bantering
‘When will we see each other?’
“Do you remember her?”
she asks me one morning.
“She died.”
It pushes me
down a deep limbo of despair
but fails to push me deeper,
when it becomes a
sentence quotidian.
The rare sun of
a London morning,
evokes in me the
crushing sights of
the blazing pyres,
charred, half-burnt
and wailing for help.
The eldritch cries
of the people perishing
bellows in my head
when my father leaves me
outre messages of the
whereabouts of his belongings.
Were we ready for this?
the vacuous promises
hollow speeches
and emptied words
obtuse politicisation
the massacre of a nation.
I whimper a cry
Not just for my mother
or the friend who lost a brother
but for the woman gasping for breath on the road
and to the sister who screams in agony of losing her own
to every single person who was expelled like dust
and to them who feel like they are crumbling like the rest –
the world cries for you and
humans near and far join their hands in a prayer for you.
An English Major, former Assistant Professor in the University of Delhi, and a writer and creative, Mahima Kaur’s works have found their home in various magazines, journals and an anthology published by an independent publisher in London.
Featured image credit: Christian Lue/Unsplash