100 Words for a week. Day 2.

The Sunflower Pants

9-year old Rachel was on all fours in her backyard, helping her elder sister, Tana,  in clearing out the weeds that had crept up miraculously after the rains.

"Tana, can you please be gentle with the pixie hairs?" Rachel looked up wide-eyed at her older sibling, as Tana yanked another dead root out of her precious patch of primroses.

Tana rolled her eyes at Rachel.

Suddenly, Rachel looked down at her Sunflower printed pants.
It was blood-stained.

"I'm hurt, Tana!" Rachel looked at her sister helplessly but Tana stared back, wordlessly.

In awe and a hint of jealousy.

100 words for a week. Day 1.

   The Muse.

She looked back at Roy.
Finally seeing, after all the years.
That She had been his Muse.
This sudden realisation left her reeling and she clutched the coffee cup tighter, burning her white palm to a bright crimson- hoping that her nerves would jangle some sense back into her fingertips.
And heart.
Paul came back from the airport washroom.
"We really must get going. They have opened the gates." He smiled.
She looked at him closely, scrutinising the man she now loved.
What was so different?
The graffiti in the ladies washroom struck her hard.
It simply said-

Second-Hand Heart.

It has been
bruised, hurt, broken, crushed, torn
and thrown up and down the curves
of extreme emotion.


It has been set aflutter by meaningless words
and stilled to silence by unkind touches.

It has longed for fairytales
but not given up Hope with everyday realities presented to it.

It has questioned Humanity and then
fallen in wonder at the greatness of Creation.

I bring my Second- hand heart to you
in humility and abjection.

There are some scars on the surface
and frays at the seams.

But it loves you with all its beating power
You are the reason it wants to be redeemed.

I implore you-
Treat it kindly.
.

Forever.

Send me roses
and silver boxes of
star-stuff
and I will love
you  more for it.
Swing me from the highest bark
of a worn-out age-old Oak
that tunnels its roots into the dark soil-
the same way you clawed through the
frost of my dark heart.
Kiss me hard as we stand in the eye of a sandstorm
or the turbulence of families.
Hold me close when I stumble
in doubt of tomorrow
or a bad trip.
Let me be a part of you
in equal as you are a part of me.
Etch words like 'Destiny', 'Rose' and 'Time' on my palm.
Let Forever start now.

Memories of Midnight.

Tonight it was different.
He sat up quickly in bed. The thousand stars he slept under, pricked his ancient skin with their cold, sharp points. He seemed to bleed moonlight and loneliness.
The death of a lover is a terrible thing. No more arms and limbs to entangle yourself in. No more sipping the same air while breathing hurriedly through love-making. No more singing crazily during Rainy July. No more witnesses to your life. He didn't always miss her but tonight, well, it didn't feel like other nights.
He couldn't remember the sound of her voice anymore. And it was not because he was turning deaf due to old age. Memory is a twisted maze in which we lose ourselves, rushing hastily through escape routes, reaching dead-ends, coming up lazily to a cul-de-sac and wondering, 'How the Hell did I end up HERE?'
We lose the essence of people, of things. Our sadness gets tinged with longing, with that familiar drop in the stomach till its nothing but a feeble nostalgia, creeping up in the deepest roots of our heart.A mere memory of sadness.
He was forgetting his wife. Once, she had been the sole reason he got out of bed in the mornings. And now this.
He pressed his eyes shut tighter. As if the pressure could force his mind to milk some old, faded  memory of her. It didn't. But then-
He saw her wade into the blue waters on the night of her 22nd Birthday. Her skirts hitched up to her knees. Her smile created ripples in the still, dark waters of her eyes . It was the first time he had the courage to reach out and touch her brown skin. And she hadn't held back...
 There was no doubt he loved her with his eternity.
A comet blazed brilliantly through the sky- hot and quick and beautiful. Just like their love had been. It glazed the night sky with the Hope of returning again, in another Time- a recurring Love story.