By Sreenandana Nandakumar
I stand alone, clad in black,
Non-existent tears adorn my blank face,
A single brooch of gold,
Pinned where the cloth meets my heart.
Senseless voices, contorted faces,
Swarm before my unhinged soul,
Trying to fit in the jagged pieces of the puzzle,
Lying serenely before me, deaf to the echoes around.
Her hair painted in gray, swept gently from her face,
Frames the smile etched in my mind,
Even in endless slumber,
The millionth sight hums a forgotten note.
Blood, sweat, tears and memories,
Cry into my shoulder breathlessly,
Whispering, "she's gone",
I don't understand, she's right here.
In decades so few, in days so many,
The voices fade, the tears dry,
The golden brooch remains,
immortalized upon the mantel,
For her memory, only mine to claim now.
On a dark winter evening,
My eyes trace their way back to the past,
To the day I was clad in blank
Helpless before my past, my present, my future.
The fear of the sleepless day,
Was not a fear begun then,
But a fear birthed aeons ago,
When a golden brooch was pinned atop a little girl's heart.
The question that then bloomed into fear,
"Mommy don't go without me, ok?"
The girl murmured, fingering the brooch.
The ghosts of her smile in answer, haunts me today.
The little girl knew,
But the sound of laughter echoed from the backyard,
Claiming her attention, as she ran away giggling.
She never saw the tears that fell.