Golden Veins

By Jameel Shahid Raza

The year started with sleepless nights, pain sneaking by my eyes.

Soul rooted in my lost lores, waves salted, hitting the shores.

A million weeps, waiting to be dried.

A path never anticipated, I walked.

My heart had been afflicted with torment.

My trust has fallen ill.

I longed for a medicine akin to hope. But there was no trust that I found it before death found me.

Those whom I always believed had a hand in my success crushed my hands under their own feet.

The hands that once held my life now wish to nurture a stranger.

Today, I have come to trust betrayal so much that even if someone trusts me, I take it as fate’s deception.

After all, when it comes to betrayal, it’s never an enemy who does it.

Suffocation was never an option, rather fate.

Choking breaths, as my thoughts coil around my mind.

I’m accustomed to finding peace in pain.

So even when it really comes, I doubt it’ll remain.

Just then, 

Piercing the veils of despair, something shined, someone…

A light very familiar.

Yet from a stranger.

It seemed, lores lost being told again,

Filling my heart with a suffocating pain.

But the light wasn’t a twinkle that would go away instantly.

Rather it was warmth that would stay constantly.

You came when my eyes were tired of crying.

Where the weight of sorrow left me silently sighing.

My eyes, lost the life to see, yet they said “colourful” when you were the view.

Still glaring at your eyes though you’re never new.

My heart has been broken, yet it replies to you when we talk.

Still beating softly, despite the cracks in my walk.

You gave the medicine I never hoped for, hope.

Picking broken pieces of mine.

From it shall I make a Kintsugi in no time.

Picking the pieces, with the courage I left to take away my own life of vain.

Mending them into a better heart with golden veins.

By Jameel Shahid Raza