Transcending Thread Of Guilt

By Disha Ransingh

My phone screen basked in that single ray of afterlight

As I watched my mother’s number with heart’s pounding fright

How do I apologize when guilt has numbed my lips?

It’s like the call button is miles away from my frozen fingertips

I know I blew faster just to break your house of cards

But now my soul shivers to fix it as it always lived stone-hard

So I let my head rest on the hardwood dusty desk

Just to let the guilt sink in or maybe carve a ‘sorry' in my throat and neck

Slowly, the mist of my brown eyes dully picturize

the footprints I left in the grasses of our cottage porch yard

and how it faded as I ambled through cityscapes and boulevard

Perhaps, in some way I bend my heart to my old country land

and how I lost my myself as the doors of this city slammed

I recall how my hands and the handrail twined in high school stairs

as a fresher just hoped to sparkle like a sapphire in everyone’s stares

So I left my friend’s hands just to cackle with those sought-after classmates

And even lied how my mansion lingered behind the glistened gates

I sneaked out of classroom doors just to roar with them under streetlight

Leaving all of my mother’s letters in shadows of closet, out of sight

I hit the theatres and halls every week in a while

But left her messages and calls unseen and unanswered like an exile

Then as chance would have it, their smiles heard like whispers about me

For all these months, I had been barking up the wrong tree

Instead of picking up pen to write on my loved ones paper

I just let my fingers rest on its edge till the paper cut grew deeper

In the dark, I mistook sand basking to be those gleaming glitter.

By Disha Ransingh