She lay heaped

 As though a bundle of

Tattered rags in a corner, stacked

To be chucked aside…

 Derailed from life’s torturous clasp

Shattered….

A human body left to rot

With cancerous cells

Cut off and bound… to be saved?

But the lifeless body susicates

On borrowed fumes of oxygen

Drilled inside

What is this human life?

Flourishing on borrowed breath?

Every inch of body, cut and diced?

Survivors are we all

Who knows….

What artificial tubes and rented breath

 Will keep us alive

In later years of life.

                                           ~Shobha Diwakar

                                               Jabalpur, India