Power games

We play with power,
It's a match.
You hit the shuttlecock and it flies above the net.
It fell on my playground while I thought I was not even playing.

The woosh of air distracted me and then
I bent to pick it up feeling hurt that I am loosing in this game
of seeing and wanting to be seen,

A thought run across the stadium and entered my head
it whispered that as much as I would want to feel neutral I am also a player here,
even though I know I had stood on the loosing ground from the very first whistle of the coach.

And so we both stood for a while across the net screaming at each other,
raising our voices louder day after day,
until the ears bled and throats became dry.

And tears came out from our eyes,
because as much as the match was between us we had also put all the force into the blows,
all those moments of helplessness that we gathered over time, we had put them nicely into the boxing gloves and began to hit each other in the name of the past that had nothing to do with your eyes and my smile.
It just happened to be there and we both picked it up to finally take revenge on someone, even though we had never been enemies.
........

I wish you well, my friend,

even though my arms are covered with bruises
I do wish you well,
deep inside in those places that I hide from everyone else,
because it feels easier to lie and say that I am enjoying the game;
...
but I am not.

I wish you well, my friend,
even though I feel defeated because you hold all the power and I walk away in shame as the audiences watch on both the sides,
I still wish you well.

From the depth of my heart,
I wish you victories in your battles
as I walk away towards mine,
I wish you climbing up towards the podium
as I walk away with the memory of your voice in my pocket,
when my branches slid through the tiny cracks in the walls that you built around yourself
and I watched you sleep trapped inside.

How many times, Mother?

It hurt Mother,
why didn't you come when I cried your name?
It hurt, Mother,
those men, they all were your sons,
they came from your womb.

I cried, Mother,
did you hear my voice?
A number of  times
I said
in the street,
in the field,
on the bus,
in a dark room,
in the back seat of a moving car.

I said no,
I don't want,
this is not right,
not in my name,
me too.

How many times, Mother
do I need to hurt,
do I need to bleed,
do I need to cry for you to listen?

How many times, Mother?
How many times, Mother,
before your sons...
(                          )

I left the spaces blank because
how does one explain the most fundamental truths to the deaf ears and blind eyes?
That you don't rape,
that you don't hate,
that you don't kill...
HOW MANY TIMES, mother?

Don't they know that I was you?

When invisible becomes visible

The words deserted him one more time. Neither the first nor the last time in his life, I guess.  The girl child was playing with the keys of an old piano while he was pouring two cups of sweet hot tea. The red and blue cups looked pretty on the top of the piano where he had placed them... or at least so I had thought.
He looked outside the window. It was a cloudy day.
'Where have you been?' he asked.
'Here and there' the girl replied 'more there than here. I got lost in the invisible forest and it did take me a while before I became myself again. I had to pick up the pieces that tore off my skirt and stitch them together again. It feels different now. Same skirt but different feeling. It feels odd to be seen  again and to know that I am looking and being looked at as well.
I once dreamt of the eyes looking at me as I was dreaming of that house among the thousand trees by the lake. I had even thought that I found that house, but it flew away with the first blow of the wind. I was invisible then so even those eyes could only look past through me.  I was a word, a sound but not a person. I was an image of someone I had wanted to become. A painting and a word in a book that would remain unfinished.
But I am here now. With eyes that see and are seen, with words that speak and are heard and with hands that give life to all those broken things that others throw away.
And you? How have you...' she said lifting her chin up to look him in the eyes... but he was not there and suddenly she was not a child but a strong woman sitting by the table with a cat in her lap and a cup of tea next to her. She was a writer now putting last punctuation marks into a book that she had written years back about a boy who had nothing, about the magic house of a piano player and about a girl who fell in love with an image of a boy whom she met at the oasis in the middle of a desert.

And as she was putting the last full stop there I got up. And then I began to live