Swan Song

(A poem, after a long time!!! That too, a non-sonnet!!)

As I crawl out of one minute into another,

Time squeezing me into a shapeless jelly

On this endless day,

Each squeeze painting images afresh in my mind,

Of all the joys we had, of the sunny days,

I think of the lone phrase that had always dwelt in my mind

Its existence real, to me alone,

That popped yesterday in a moment of impulse,

Now reborn in this crowded world of thoughts,

Finding its joy, and slashing mine across.

I know I was wrong, I know you didn't deserve it.

And the confession was long due.

Yet sometimes the past is a ghost,

That haunts you long after you tried to bury it,

Long after you forgot.

You think 'it was just a mistake'-

And yet there can be nothing just about a mistake!

As time paints my world in black and white, draining all the color,

I can only erase myself out of existence, now

And give birth to the vacuum that has long consumed me.

And while in the vacuum labor, I hold at my tongue

the word I had always hated, knowing its innate iniquity,

But in the spasm that my vacuum was born,

In the moment of extreme pain, and shame,

Sinking in the shrouds of death, I say,

with a furious hope, and fear and qualm

"Forgive me! Give me a chance again!"