Seven Minutes Over

By Komal Aandhiwal

1. Wake up now, you've been asleep exactly two hundred sixty five days.

They waited and waited, only to cry, only to curse your mother. Wake up now.

Cry. Cry. Cry to breathe. They cry because they now wish you died before you cried. 

Can you hear the cry of the conch? It has begun.

2. Swallow and swallow. practice not to wallow.

There's no wisdom, there are just things to learn. 

There are just things to spew and unlearn. 

Learn, there are no friends.

Don't forget to learn to unlearn.

3. Did you see? where mouths exaggerate, yours are mute.

Your mind is screaming though,

you're a fraud, you're a fraud, you're a fraud.

They see through your ruse.

They will see through your ruse. 

Listen to your mother. There are no friends. 

Don't unlearn that. I repeat, never.

4. Skin washed with turmeric and blood-stained dreams

They want that dime, they don't allow you to earn, it's a crime.

Welcome to your Stockholm syndrome.

Listen to them. don't let go of the rope, bleed.

5. Climb that ladder you waged a war for.

What they never told you is, there's no end.

Keep climbing, you have to strip to the bone.

Keep climbing, you've already sold your soul.

Listen to your child. She's crying.

6. You had to learn it the hard way, isn’t it?

There are no friends. There is no forever.

You owe answers to mouths that have no right to ask, 

to ears that have no business to listen.

Prayers weren't your answers, prayers can't be your questions. 

There's no god. There's one God. There are many. 

Stop searching. There's nothing to find, there was nothing found, but yet everything.

7. I know you wait for a static beep, you're tired of the pulse.

Run, you never know where the finish line is,

unless it takes your neck by surprise, or unless you are forced to draw one.

Sleep my love, it's a long nightmare ahead

By Komal Aandhiwal