Release

By Nandini Khanna

Those tears that pool in your ears

and stir the fears that make you blind.

That seething misery that sits

behind your brain, beneath your mind.

The tears that flood your ears

and make you leave your dread behind.

Those tears that reach your ears

because they want you to listen.

To the inflation of your lungs,

the pain in your gums,

the heart that was stung

into submission.

To the brain in your skull and the mind in your brain,

and the naked soul that glistens.

Your eyes full of stone,

cold, wounded, dead.

Parched eyes that tried to flow

but freely bled instead.

Your mouth that spoke till it broke

so that they need not have words,

yet closed when you saw yourself

in that wellspring of tears.

Your throat that choked when you tried to cry

yet gaped for their souls laid bare,

a curse in disguise,

a palace of despair.

And your ears

that made you deaf for to the music of your mind,

that made you listen to that which your eyes made blind,

that threatened the wild, violent silence of your heart

if you deigned to stop listening again.

The salt searing the wounds on your face,

in those canyons that were deserts too long,

flaying them open with such grace,

as the tired mind shrieks its song,

caressing with such pride,

as the being is cleaved in two,

darkness too bright for open eyes,

too alive even for you.

By Nandini Khanna