Malailah

By Shaambhavi Khanna

AN ABSTRACT OF MALAILAH-
Do you remember being a mother, a child, a sufferer or a betrayer?
Can you see the stories that you’ve abaondoned of a dear or a foe?
Can you still feel the emptiness of a void created ages ago?
Have we ever really forgotten?
Have we ever really forgiven?
Do ghosts of unburied past live in our cores, haunting and being haunted?

POETRY-
The willow trees by a sly lake
And a secrecy shadows her keen grave
Violently I have been reminded again
Of an agony that was abandoned deaths hence

I remember her sallow, dewy face comprehending the waters
Her ivory robe capering along the drift
Her loosened feet maundering the sweeps
And the enigmas that strangled her breaths

I remember her frosted arms decked with fears poking around for me
And I remember the quiet screams roving her hushed glare
When at last her numbed heart had followed me
Through the trails of fallen and deceased

I see her silent corse, yet graceful and serene
Her starry eyes have now locked their dreams
A fancied crown of blue dazes wreathed her tenderly
I knew the ethereal charm rested on her subtle rosy cheeks
Before I would have caressed sweet Malailah my last
A fond grave had embraced her glee

The charm that once girdled Malailah
Had soon traded and beseiged
They tricked and carried her away
Oh, they took my daughter from me!

Perhaps she propels her memories towards me
In each life on the leaden noon she died
To eternally nudge my buried child
And probe my yearns that guard her pride

Ah I’ve been reminded of the life I loved her intense
And the absence that bides near myself
Mirrors the vibrancy she lent
Malailah my dear, how did your magic turn to doom?

I remember how I swayed your cradle
And the unworried cheers that glided your smile
Since when did you bear the cares of that life
Malailah my dear, where can I find your merry delight?

Alas, my youth has been burdened by the reminiscences of her
The passionate concerns have once again flooded my olden heart
I carol her dearest lullabies in mellow strains
To calm the horrors that haunt her grieving ghost

O’ my treasured malailah,
I’ll remember you with the dusks of December and its wintry moon
I’ll love you forever, through all autumns' and many junes'
I’ll think of you as the florets wilt to seeds
Malailah, I’ll faithfully love you in the barren eves

Oh, my restless sweet,
I’ve been told of your reluctant sleep
And your unrelieved longing to be nurtured by me
Oh, my troubled sweet,
You crave to be harboured but not in discreet
So now I lovingly call my sweet Malailahs' heart
And wish for her undisturbed peace

O’ Malailah, my hidden love
Sweet child, away from my solemn arms
Your torment aches my helpless heart
Oh the calm that would beset if you had lived
Yet now how earnestly I yearn for you to forgive.