Breathless Roots

By Udita Sharma

I drift on dark, flooded roads,                                                              

White light crashes, flashing cars collide.

Shop doors rattle up and down, like a ghostly elevator;

Dropping with a BANG, from the terrace, to the basement.

Stop. Just stop. The street lights are flickering with the glow of a firefly, 

The ground is screeching in pain, the waves are crashing onto a sandless beach.

The cracked windows of a frail, broken house, shatter, and the glass stabs my feet.

But I don’t feel it; For I don’t have anything left to feel, its all empty, like a vacuum, about to suck the city in.Hills tremble; warm blankets and hot cocoa float -With the winds that carry them.The bumpy floor melts beneath me;I grip tight, holding my breath - How long shall I suffer ?Long enough not to drown?Or just enough to escape,The winds racing under the orange sky?My roots aren’t strong enough,

To bear the weight - Of my trunk, leaves, branches,And the dark sky falling on me.Then day rose, the sun gleams at the city;The fractured heavens fixed with stained, used bandages.But was it enough?The soil beneath my broken bones already melted into the floods,My leaves turned from green to black, My body scarred from the storm’s brutal embrace,My eyes dried up, like grapes under the sun.

Flashlights flicker under the stars; the ground sinks below me;

I breathe out.

By Udita Sharma