Ashen-Cradle
A haunting past that trails behind,
An unnerving shadow that fails to blend.
The harrowing voices that curve the bend,
Sending your sanity off to the other end.
The gleaming red eyes that tend to blind,
The long veiny hands stretched out to lend.
One that offers an ironic life to bade,
The other that offers prosperity to the dead.
A single screech delivered into the calmness of the night,
Resulting in a sublimal dance with Death
in plain sight.
"I can't leave!"the woman pleads.
And then a single tear bleeds,
As she holds onto her belly like a tree nurturing Her seeds.
"Take me,but give my offspring a nourishing life to cherish!"
"Offer prosperity to the living,and allow me to perish!"
A woman's soulful cries pierce through the ears of Death,
As it transforms to a mother's fostering wreath .
"I have provided you two choices,from which you should choose,thereupon which you would decide a course:a tumultous one,or a heavenly life disclosed."
"While selecting,please do not halter,since there is nothing much you can alter."
"The life of the newborn has been sealed in its fate within the Mother's womb,and might be offered a rebirth,as inscribed in those Egyptian Tombs."
"No,it wasn't fate,it was the unlikely sequences that unfolded on this unholy date."
"My baby,my only love,had seen a bright future with him,only for his name to be now carried by a dove."
"That awful creature,that immoral creation,sped up too fast,drunk and driving,to lead to my sweet baby's cremation."
"Death,I could have chosen the crippled life,but without my baby,why live a life of pain and turmoil?"
"I henceforth would place my choice as death,Oh dear Death,I really hope you would issue a path of karma for my baby and me,unleash wrath upon that miserable creature,in the name of the trusting faith with which I abide in you."
How strange,a woman putting her trust in Death to take revenge,when every course of action is bounded by fate.Death gently smiled,as He led her by hand,to the spontaneously sparkling Heavenly gates.
And one last look around,and in the blink of an eye,the atmosphere became gloomy again,with a struggling cry.A car was found,overturned,with a man inside wrenching in agony,his futility burnt.Karma and Faith,had returned.
Copyright ©
Smiti Basu
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