Rune of War

By Dhruva Nandakumar

Afghanistan isn't a country, a mere region. It's an intricate idea, a jungle of desire, signets of malice bleeding upon the boundless feet of its fury.

I freeze, fist clenched, drowning in carmine

as the barren mountains of Herat come to life before my brimming eyes. The rufous sky outside mirrors the soil, damp with aspirations of generations swallowed by forgotten eons;

Pierced with bullets and bled by betrayal,

the children of life refuse to bloom in this venomous bosom. Our graveyards are left abandoned as the dead drink countless lives in this embezzling theater.

To fall in love with this salient silence is to dissolve into a plethora of thorns.

Hafiza, who sang of Mika'il now escorts Izra'il to his abode. Those velvet lips that flowed with nectar

now feed crimson rivers,

Eyes that copulated the horizon now carry etchings of scars for millennia to come.

Tomorrow is a dream, farther than the fabled phrontistery, shackled by freedom but tonight, I shall be liberated. Tonight I shall write. My sleepless hours of gore, filled with pendant legs,

reminiscents of broken wings haunt me. I stare in horror at penurious girls draped in sable,

their frigid eyes, withering at the fleeing hope.

One of them takes my chafed hand into her endless wrinkles and whispers marasta, help;

I am cradled by the mortifying corse of the bivouac's wires, adorning its veins like an unclad bride, ready for sacrifice.

I paint mother's carcass with tears, clinging hard enough to breathe life into her desolate bones.

She does not wake. How could she not, even in this divine orchestra of infinite gunshots?

I trace father’s fingerprints over the crystal vase, his firm embrace housing my quivering palm.

Scouring the potter's field for glinting treasures, taunting it's blushing gifts, I gape lifelessly at the jewel-clad sky. My soul rests with those immortals The millions who gripped a pen with vigor

Because they could not pull the trigger.

Afghanistan is a land of warriors, not a meager rune of war.

By Dhruva Nandakumar