Maybe We Need To Stop Living Among Metaphors.

A single puff of dust swoops up from the ground as if conjured by a magic spell. Between the dust that now settles back onto the dry ground, the droplet that has caused this tiny hazard is long gone; already soaked into the depths of the thirsty earth. Gradually the whole space starts being bombarded with such tiny dust bombs, and the burning plane drinks it up as quick. The heat rises evidently out of the ground as the water droplets pick up speed; it trickles out of the ground, prompted by the cooling rain. In no time the rain spell grows in intensity drenching the parched land, the thirsting flowerbeds, the burnt grass, the dry soil. It subsides even before it can trickle down towards an unknown path. 

The drowning sun sends golden waves that glint off the raindrops that cling to each surface. There is a general relief that drifts through the air, soaking people along with the rain. The air resonates with cries of happiness and prayers being send heaven wards. Between the beautiful chaos, that is the rain and the mayhem caused by everything around, she’s caught in the moment. Despair and satisfaction run through her, somehow together. 

The light from the setting sun filters through the window, being the only source of illumination in the gradually darkening room. As if it’s trying to show her the light but she was too much of a coward to break through her cage. Or maybe it was just the light slowly seeping out of sight. Maybe she just needed to stop living among metaphors. 

Between the profound desolation and satisfaction other emotions fluctuate, creating an incoherent tangled mass of feelings that looks like a twinkling star, fading and glowing, and fading and glowing. The satisfaction she was feeling, encased by time in that moment was an oddly familiar sensation. Although, how it sustained with the growing feeling of melancholy and despair was awe engaging. Maybe she had found bliss in her sadness. Or maybe sorrow had become home, the place where the heart was. 

Amidst all this, there was never an ounce of emptiness. The despair was not hollow, neither the silence nor the loneliness. Each was a part of her own, entwined so strongly with her backbone, knotted with her nerves and melded with her blood. She was them and they were her. She weaved her anguish in patterns and found happiness smiling in the folds of it. Why did people assume she was unhappy? She was not.

The monotonous despair had shown her so many colors of life and it had taught her well, too. Everything was there and she was the one revolving in the middle, touching despair, sparking happiness, dying a little while she lived each day. Being a part of everything, everything a part of her. 

The grateful exclamations start afresh as the rain comes down in full haste. The light has all but left her now darkened room but she doesn’t flips the light switch, she doesn’t moves from her place for she is content while watching the hues that dance within her; as her realizations take shape.

-Momina

Among Candle Flames

The flames of the candle danced in the darkness. Not one flame but three, although the candle was only one and a single wick inside it burned. The candle was one, the reflections two. And together they were three, brighter and better but from a single source.

She sat very far from the candle, among the shadows that had not been driven away by the brightness. Her eyes, however, were locked on the candle flame, following it’s every movement. The room was enveloped in silence, light and darkness. She moved closer to the candle, out in the light as her shadow grew larger behind her. She raised her hand to cup the flame, enclosing the room into darkness again. The only thing that now glowed was her palm at one side of the flame and her face at the other; intent eyes sparkling mischievously. Moving her hand closer she touched the flame, clenching her hand to a fist capturing it, the light. And then she let go, all too soon as the light scalded her hand.

She slid down her hand, holding it firmly, lighting the room once again. The hot wax that melted close to the flame slipped past the mouth of the candle, sliding down, gathering onto her hand. Stinging and burning. She whipped her hand away in pain, knocking the candle to the floor. She fell back in fear when she looked up from nursing her hand, as fiery arms rose from the burning carpet. Now a new kind of light illuminated the room, the reflections even this time two. Rising spoke, flaming claws; she fainted in the now lit shadows, wasting away in silence and the hissing of the burning room.

-Momina.

Are you looking for beauty or finding faults?

Love is a very simple thing, and we tend to complicate the simplest of things. It’s unnecessary to go in the details of everything, to discover its chemical basis, its origin… the first story. I don’t feel the need to do any such thing. Even though love can be quite vast in its meaning, it’s really not that difficult. We make it difficult though, categorizing it and sizing it up. Why? What’s the point of falling in love with a single person when you can fall in love with so many things, over and over again?

We’ve all heard the about the difference of loving and being in love. Why? Why can’t we fall in love with everything? Why can’t we sincerely like all the things that we want to? We can, but we don’t. We don’t because there is this general hype about falling in love with one beautiful person.

I do not believe it. I fall in love with so many things, people, deeds etcetera. Not love them, but fall in love with them. I fall in love with words; random words scrawled on walls, on paper, on blogs, on social sites, by people I don’t know and I might not ever know and I fall in love with them.

I fall in love with poetry, not necessarily famous poets, like Whitman, Plath, Yeats… no, everybody loves them. I fall in love with poetic verses that bloom out of nowhere in the minds of random people all across the globe. They jot them down and forget, but so many people fall in love with them.

I fall in love with deeds; a tiny gesture, a smile. A stranger smiling at a stranger, a scene I only witness, a scene I am not even a part of and I fall in love with it.

I fall in love when I see two people falling in love. I fall in love with their love. I look at them, once practically strangers and know so close and dear to one another. How can I not fall in love?

I fall in love with the nature; clouds, a sunrise, a glimpse of the dark sky where only a single star gleams, an eclipse, the expanse of water stretching out till the ends whilst I float in the middle of it, the promise of land beyond. I fall in love with them even though I know that they won’t come again as themselves. The next sunrise would be different, the sea will be taken by a tide, and the clouds will change form. Everything will become a new something to fall in love with, only to change again.

I fall in love with art. All sorts; decorating the corners of a notebook, painted on walls, an incoherent mix of color in an adolescent’s sketch-pad. I fall in love with laughter, echoing from the house next door, the table beyond ours; people reveling in their own personal and private jokes with laughter echoing out as one.

I fall in love with so much more, and each time I do, I fall slightly in love with the people associated with it. And you do, too. You are falling in love, too, not just once but over and over again, with people you don’t know, things you don’t understand, stories you haven’t read… you are falling without categorizing, you are falling in love genuinely without thinking about the consequences.

The world, you see, is a beautiful place. And it’s filled with so much love that if we consider it, we can take over the hate. Fall in love with it.

-Momina.

I Have Enclosed Myself In An Infinity Of My Own

It comes down in an even sprinkle, falling straight; gently beating the ground. I watch quietly as each drop falls on my clothes and gets sucked up by their fibers leaving nothing but a tiny dark patch. It would have been nonexistent if it wasn't for the rest of the rain drops slowly soaking me up. My clothes gradually turn a shade or two darker than their original color, my hair dampens and water droplets slip past my face and my half bare arms.

I had dragged a chair to the center of the driveway where there is no overhead shelter, now I sit on it with my feet up, the rain water swishing around the legs of the chair. The heels of my feet rest on the very edge of the chair, my arms around them and my fingers intertwined so my feet won’t slip due to the wet tension. Hugging my legs, my face turned sideways so that I can feel the rain on my face and dousing my carelessly knotted hair.

For a moment I had considered making myself a cup of coffee but I opted against it. So now nestled in the pocket, in the arm of the chair, are several rain-sprayed jasmines that I’ve picked from our garden. Their scent floats all around me, fusing with the smell of the rain. It is so incredibly, crazily beautiful, this moment, sitting enveloped in a self-embrace with nothing but the mingling scent of rain and jasmines and the occasional tweeting of the birds shattering the silence. My far vision blurred for I have long abandoned my spectacles in the wake of this morning rain, hence, I am enclosed in a tiny bubble of my own. It’s so personal, as if the rain falls down for me, only.

It comes down so silently, getting lost amidst the whir of the ceiling fans and the hum of the air conditioners. Nobody wonders how they manage to sleep so soundly when the heat otherwise woke them up every day, every hour. The perks of being an insomniac include experiencing these exquisite early morning rains, whenever they come; earlier than the early risers. You connect with the silence and the beauty because it’s only you.

I've been sitting in the red canvas chair in the center of the driveway, in a sleeping neighborhood with the breeze playing with the hair that has come loose from my bun and the rain drenching me, for the past two hours. I got up only once to encase the sheer ecstasy of these blessed moments in the fold of my words; adding another piece to the plethora of such captured moments.

I am sneezing and slightly cold but it doesn't matter. I've waited for quite long to feel numb like this as I

cherish the rain, silent and lone.

-Momina.

A Conversation With Conscience

“Give yourselves the reasons, if you don’t trust anyone else’, she heard. The sudden interruption caused her to forget about her muttering, look around and then think the situation through.

She rarely ever started a conversation but this was fascinating, and hadn't it been initiated already?

“How so?” she asked.

“You know the rights and the wrongs, a few if not all. You know when it’s okay to ask you, and you know when it’s not. And you know that anger is pointless when it’s something you can do, under your control.”

“But it’s not… destroying my peace, my contemplation. It’s wrong. Of course I am angry. Giving me an illusion of choice is wrong. Deciding my future for me is wrong.”

“Is it? Didn't you have your moments of peace? One cannot live in peace if there is a war going around in the surrounding or inside you. The illusion of choice was wrong, but so is this illusion, that of peace.”

She is speechless. It waits for her to speak; it gives her time to let it all sink in.

“The illusion of choice is given to you, you can however, correct it. Have your say. But this delusion, you have created it yourself; you've made yourself believe in it.

“You built your own shackles, you hold the key; it’s all you.”

“It’s all me”, she said to herself as her mind wrapped about this.

She lifted herself on her feet and looked at it, staring at her with similarly curious eyes, through the mirror.

-Momina.