If I Lose

 

Vitolda Klein@Unsplash.com

So much is to be done, and I lie lifeless here. Gasping, withholding my obligation to give up. There's a gaping bullet hole on my chest, and warm blood is gushing out. My life is melting away like wax from a candle. Bathing in blood, with a pinch of breath, in-between the snaps of my finger, but lost, voyaging places far-far from here. I am hopeless, yet I am hopeful. The world lives on, after me and after mine.

I was blessed with opportunities that crossed me but cursed with the choices that robbed me. To the days when I ran rampant, the blinders hid what I needed to see, and I had become a threat to myself. Those moments of Yester pleasure, which I turned back to and found my yesterdays stuffed with guilt and remorse, they had me reminisce the choices I failed to make, destinations I refused to hold on to, journeys I promised to adore but couldn't; sealed within the unforgiving forgetful blankets of yesterday, the triumph lasts accentuated and transposed as pain and regrets.

When I harboured ambitions beneath my feet, I could not fuel my spark. Incomplete and unsatisfied, I gobbled up the grains to be sowed. Ambition as I see now, what was it? What did I seek to fulfil, what famish did I have? A famish to live a life, a famish to begin, or a famish to continue? Now all veneer is washed up, diluted and detoxified, and I see that all I had dreamt about was to be full. I was to enjoy myself and the days that breezed through my fingers. With every second that radiated pleasure, a pleasure to breathe, blissed beneath, and dying to live. I craved days where I could churn out humour on my failures and laugh with the near and dear ones near me, awaiting laughter and smile. All friends and just friends, I longed for a time when no enemies were powerful enough to be my enemy, or I wasn't weak enough to be anyone's enemy.

A question always intrigues me. An idea to exist crumbles in front of this question. An idea that defies loyalty to continuity, "Why is giving up unworthy of winning?" Is a dream to win the only dream we should dream? Rising above, why is that a compulsion to lead to? Is loneliness where we start and aspire to be? At times more often than I can remember, I have been distraught by this impulsion to surrender my today in hopes to get to tomorrow before everyone else, blind to the truth, under duress to match the pace to everyone.

Aesthetic dreams, we all have them. Some of us want to bask in the rain, and some want to drench in the sun. Some of us want to breathe before the ocean, and some want to swim in the Himalayas. Some of us want to hold our love's hand before the chaos, and others wish us to be alone. With undevised destinations and forgotten whereabouts, some of us want to lose ourselves within a place yet unknown to us. And some desire a place whither music dances wither the wind chimes, and we tranquil our souls from the dust of remembrance. Likewise, I have a dream. A dream to soak me with rain. And through dripping cold, I dream of surrendering. Coaxed by warmth, I then wish to walk on a sunny day. I dream of the day where I lay naked before a hurricane approaching me, with nothing to lose but me, all of me.

At 1 a.m. in the morning, the loudest noise is a heartbeat and the sounds of your breath. If you are to dream peace, they pollute. Now, I stay at peace, true peace, for the sky itself sleeps above me. The words that my brain mumbles almost faze the breeze of peace that has come by. The body I tended, hoped to gain from, is now as valuable as a grain of dust. All that is left is a breath. A breath to lose and to whom, no clue. Some faces come by and fade, promise to stay but bade farewell. And smiles, I have smiled for many, and many have smiled to me, at me. But yet, only some smiles remain; amidst this destitution, I can afford just a few. First, the smile on the face of my mother when she had me in her lap, and she stared at me so long that she cried, and smiled, and perhaps kissed me, hugged me and loved me for the first time, that smile I cannot remember, but it plays before my eyes now, vividly. Second, the smile on my face now, an achiever's face, which I cannot see, but I feel gratefully. And finally, the smiles on the faces that shall realize my peace as of now, with wept pains and forgotten anguish. I cannot see that too, but I rest before their shadow, hopeful. This last breath that palpates on my chest is to those who will hear, from miles away, from a distance, and from the future.

Madhu was found on a cold December morning. People that saw could barely believe that someone that held that much life was now robbed of it. Whoever set eyes realized that someone lost had now perished. A gun had been clasped in hand, and a hole had been peeking from the heart. People got glances, and all eyes that befell on the lips were shaking. The lips clenched something unworldly; before the sublunary eyes stood a divine smile, as if borrowed from a victorious warrior. 

No notes were found. No messages were shared. Madhu had now been gone without a cause to many.

Madhu's pyre burnt red, but the ones that looked saw it philamot, the colour of dead leaves. In mere moments even the remains of Madhu were lost, forever and ever. After several months, on a rainy evening, someone came to visit. A mother was seen, fragile she had been, and there she looked, where her child vanished. With just breaths, she softly spoke words that only she heard. And a smile glowed on her face as if awoken from a deep sleep. She was not asking nor stating; she was announcing. She never returned, but like her, a few others came with similar faces and words, returned with a smile when they came with pain and returned never again.