I could be truly but myself

just as them on the hem of the moon

or at the edge

in some realm of possibility

whatever it could be-

to put all my heart into words

and let my silence bleed

and run wildly through its pages.

And blank, I stare wallowing in my head-

What’s it all in that quantum entanglement?

The bystander thoughts and the bygone ones

trawl words through ceaseless bouts of pain.

The pain reasoned

the unreasonable pain

to give birth to a poem

for me and a distant listener

to acquaint with the pain

accustomed to his own.

a string of broken words travail

as the pain climbs up

into the distorted emotions

to ponder in my lacerating heart.

its fragrance redolent with poetry

the blood, the poem-

the bloody poem!

though this makes it no short of faults.

                                                                              ~ Bushrah Khursheed

                                                                                  Kashmir, India