. I AM PARCHED ....I WANT WATER

 

I am tired. I am beaten.

I am trodden every day with feet and bones.

They are a dead weight.

Every day and every night I find myself being dug deep.

Every day and every night I am battered and bruised.

Every day and every night I get scorched and burnt.

Every day and every night I find myself asphyxiating in smoke.

Ah God the smoke, the thickness of it, the stench of it.

Every day and every night I hear the wails and the screams.

Every day and every night  I want to scream in pain, but my screams get silenced by someone else’s that are louder and more anguished.

There was a young lady in red who came to rest on me ...

I could see her pale skin and her red bangles.

I could see her dark hair and her eyelashes so dark and long.... fanning her still eyes... her lashes, almost touching her cheeks.

I could almost smell the sweetness of her body.

And then she lay on top of me.

And then she was engulfed in flames on top of me.

I saw her young husband collapse  like a leaf.

I saw her parents crumble into twisted heaps of bones screaming in silence.

Barely had they left that I felt another weight on me…and another and  yet  another?

Every day and every night I wait for a hiatus.

Every day and every night I am consumed by a conflagration.

Every day and every night I find myself shrivelling, drying, dying.

I want to breathe the fresh clean air, I want water , I am parched

I am one of the many crematoriums.

Are there many of us , I wonder ?