JULIET

By Kriti Rathi

In the dread of the cold night,

The silver moon gleamed

And the church clock

Struck eight…

I was there,

Staying silently in my grave.

And I felt a sudden commotion

In the air, when

I heard your footsteps

Moving towards me.

As the dry dead pine leaves

Crushed beneath your feet.

Such a shirk it created within me,

And caused so much fear….

Because what I hear was

What I had awaited

For a long time to hear

Your footstep my love...

As the burning moon witnessed us

From above.

You kept on coming closer to me

And stopped by my tomb

And there sat my poor soul

Which rose up from its doom.

The nearer you came to me…

The more it caused a stir

And thus, one by one

I began to remember

Who I was, and who you were.

And the brute world around us

Which has brought us till here….

For centuries I remember,

I rested silently in my grave

I was the Romeo they all know

And you were my Juliet

My Mistress, my lady, my love.

Born again to find me in that night’s loom;

But, Alas! I lay there silently in my doom.

You kneeled before my grave

And looked at my tomb with a gaze,

As you placed a rose on my soil above my tomb

“At last, I made it to you…”

You said to me, my dear

While you dropped a pearl of your tear…

Then, a sudden cold wind

Across the entire graveyard,

And behind you, “your hazel locks” flew.

Locks that used to be

Of the colour of a flower of mustard.

Your beautiful face seemed so different.

Your built so unknown to me,

And your large brown eyes, so unfamiliar.

Yet the sorrow you had in your eyes

Was the same

As it was then, as it is now.

A sorrow so painful

That it caused an aching

In my cold, melting bones.

“Alas! My love!”, you cried,

As you unwrapped a knife from your scarf

And smiled in satisfaction

While you cut your vein

As if you had so much pleasure from that pain.

Your warm blood fell onto my cold grave

Which was as red as the rose,

You placed above my tomb.

So red, that it looked black,

Under the full moon’s blaze.

My invisible soul still laid numb

As such helplessness I had to face

Because I could not take you into my embrace.

There you fell next to my soul,

Intoxicated by frenzies.

In that night’s weariness,

And while my grave drank the last drop of your blood

“Until death do us apart”,

you whispered for the last.

Thereafter you turned,

As cold as the midnight’s breeze

As your unclosed teary eyes sank into an eternal freeze.

Another autumn has passed

Since the cold haunting night

With me resting silently in my doom

However, there is a strange commotion

In the air once again.

For blossomed is a blood-red rose

On the rose tree above my tomb.

By Kriti Rathi