Dark and mystified, you hide behind the shadows
Pouncing on people like a blood thirsty tiger,
You are the blatant ultimate truth that hits me hard each time you take a soul
Incomplete lives, incomplete goodbyes are all that you leave
Instilling fears in the strongest of the hearts
Your smile shudders me to my inner core.
Yet today, I stand pondering why, o why
was there not a pall of gloom but serenity and peace
not a fearful scorn but a glint of smile
unsaid goodbyes but this feeling of a blessing on my head
My aita* died in her sleep.
Without warnings, without farewells
our family was orphaned with the void of her absence
but still I can feel her more than I did when she was a lively old lady
and understand her giving and misgivings
Did death separate me from her?
or did it help me know her better?
Maybe till I breathe I am bound to dread the inevitable,
keep choosing to keep it miles away from my tiny world
But now, death doesn’t seem to be as dark and dreary,
It is that time when I break the physical metaphors and learn to trust my unknown abode somewhere.......
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About the poem
The poem is an expression of my first experience with the death of a loved one, my aita (grandmother). It touches upon the mind’s dilemma between letting go a person after death and accepting their metaphysical presence in life through a series of questions in search for answers of the unknown.
