The Pulse

By Hussain Kachwala

My heart speaks no more than it needs to nowadays. 

I know that I'm a guest, evading the final touch of the shifting mortal coil. And as the circlet of time ticks, my lungs collapse a slight upon themselves My body is no more a vessel with duty to sit and burn 

As the night becomes one with itself, and darkness feeds upon my marble of my  eyes, 

I hang myself by the ankle and hope to drain the rotting touch of death under  my teeth. 

My throat writhes in pain, screaming until the air within my breast ceases to  exist, 

Feeling a score of spasms strike my hands, 

As though a thousand pustules of decay burst at once beneath my skin. 

I heed the call of mine cortex and grip upon the atlas of my spine, Pulling upon at as though as though the hilt of a blade, 

Hoping to free myself from the shackles of corporeal flesh. 

And as each section detaches from its origin and feels the outside air, I weep in blissful agony that the tale shall soon end. 

And just as I think that my soul shall shuffle off this mortal coil and I shall find  eternal slumber,

All that is material pauses around me, 

Suspended in time as I feel my core travel the path I had only ever heard in  myths spoken by wrinkled lips. 

The world turns itself on its head, granting me the ceiling to ground my feet in  as I watch in sheer horror and awe, the Visitor I owe a welcome. 

I see the One that comprises all and nothing, that which carries the mark of  death and life in delicate balance. The mass and the void. 

The faceless Light that burns all shadows in its presence, 

The One who has a thousand names and none, 

Who carries the crucible of an infinite universe in its palm, 

Whose throne lies beyond time itself. 

And in the moment I believed that I too would be eternally cleansed by flame, A fitting punishment for my sins against myself and the world alike, 

The Light looked upon me, not as the conductor of the symphony of all sounds  in the sky, 

But as the one thing I needed most. 

A friend. 

The Light embraced me in all my broken, bloody, and rotted form, 

And turned my tears to nectar as it extinguished the root of the rot deep within  the caverns of my soul 

And as it did so, it looked into these eyes of mine with love that I did not know  could exist, 

Leaving a part of itself within me, 

Allowing me rebirth.

I feel myself travelling back to the moment of reckoning, as though it has been  erased from time itself. 

As I open my eyes now, I am where I always was, 

Yet the plague no more racks my bones. 

My eyes see with light all that I have become, 

And as I look upon the the skin that sits upon the point of sacrilege, I see it has  been scarred, a reminder of harsh reality. 

I accept this dichotomy of soul and flesh, and form no weapon against it, For it is in this balanced pardon that my mortality lies. 

As my scar begins to blossom in the winter rain, 

My heart speaks no more than it needs to.

By Hussain Kachwala