Reminiscence

By Ananya Iyer

There is a seed of sullen despair in the center of my heart, where I'm supposed to be safe within me, I am running away from the nightmares that pursue me. At the center of each person is themselves, but I've yet to find that within me.

I look in the mirror and see a face that doesn't match the name.

I stare deep into the brown eyed soul and feel his pain. It feels like grief, an unsettling storm of loss and disappointment that never leaves, it never ends.

I see a broken heart with an almost dead beat. The rhythm hums for someone who's gone alone in silence without looking back.

He wears the gift, the scent, but even that fades away from the interludes of time.

Constantly begging god to trade places with someone who wants to live. To give him the illness of cancer to ease him a journey towards the lord's gates. Behind, in that moment he would leave the name, the face, the body and the pain.

He wouldn't be remembered for long, but he would be grieved.

In the moment I go I'll be on my knees surrendering my lifeless life to you. I'll confess all my sins and leave the past behind me.

Wherever my body is buried flowers will grow, and a tree will sprout to feed back the earth what it fed me. Name that tree after me, for it will match what I could not when I was still living.

By Ananya Iyer