BLINK

A Message to Readers: Our surroundings today and the problems that plague us so are a testament to how lives can be upturned with the blink of an eye. The objective of this piece of poetry and the artwork, is to convey how important it is to cherish what you have and live in the moment, because you do not know when it will all go away. Take it all in, before you blink. 

(Painting By: Tanya Jain)

Walking down a deserted street,

A haunted silence hounding me,

I stop to look at my reflection

In the dusty glass of an abandoned store.

 

Blink.

 

A little girl stares back at me,

Frowning as she flees the grasp of her parents;

“I do not want to listen to your stories,”

She slams the door of her room shut.

 

Blink.

 

She is older, now, gazing desperately,

Into the ICU, as her mother’s oxygen level plummets;

She shivers, as regret overcomes her,

Of all the tales she would never hear.

 

Blink.

 

Medical interns, scalpel in hand,

Open a cadaver’s body bag;

Cutting it bare, they promise themselves,

“I’d never let a man die on my table.”

 

Blink.

 

Health-givers move, from bed to bed,

Performing CPR and checking for a pulse;

“Time of death,” seems to be

All that they utter these days.

 

Blink.

 

Siblings, in swimsuits, run freely,

The waves crashing in the background;

They build sandcastles, tall and intricate,

Tracing their names, never to be washed away.

 

Blink.

 

The men collect piles of wood,

Making their way through the beach;

Knocking down all sand structures,

Replacing them with pyres for the dead.

Blink.

 

I see myself, from a year ago,

Looking at a book I wished to buy;

Pushed by a passer-by in a crowded market,

“I wish these people disappeared,’ I pray.

 

Blink.

 

Wish granted, I stand alone,

Masked, on the verge of breakdown;

I hear the sirens behind me, warning,

As I crash down to the concrete, fading.