Of Dust and Pain / Perspective by Megha Sood

Of Dust and Pain

The slow effervescence

the vaporizing effect of the sadness

body losing itself to the thin air

slowly and surely

the mothball slowly giving it to the air

its existence and its frailty

and the deep sense of attachment

the ephemeral bond between the existence and frailty

the curled up pieces of the burning papers

with its bits and pieces

earmarking the days and the nights

with its ashen touch

like the sand in the water

submerged and yet to dissolve

you can still feel

the existence of the silt and the sediment

the gelid hands of the reality

pinches me with its

cold fingers and freezes my warm heart

this sacred ritual of dissatisfaction

and time eating time

when the body completes the sacred circle

and suddenly there comes a realization

an epiphany of the sorts

we were all a ball of illusion

soaked in the murky pulverized dust

of pain and angst

to begin with.

Perspective

With my shackled mind and encumbered thoughts

as my feet rise up the

steps of the old mighty temple

desolate yet imbued

with the fullness of life

my body disguised as a prayer

and my palms folded

as the dissatisfaction is

neatly tucked in the center of my palms

I count the steps

in sync with my raging heartbeats and bated breath

I walk by the neat line of the beggars and less fortunate ones

the lingering shine of the quest in their eyes aren’t different from mine

carrying the burden of the life on their stooped shoulder

and heavy eyelids, they are praying too

under their muted breath

but to a god of a different origin

which will satiate the hunger in their knotted belly

their hunger is not so different from mine

I say this to myself

as I reach the parapet and

with my warm feet on the gelid

checkered floors of the temple

resembling the mosaic of truth and the lies

weaved surreptitiously in my bleak reality

brooding with deep silence

I face the divine with a question deep seeded

in my bleary eyes

the answers to which

I already passed by on my way here.

Megha Sood lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. She is also a contributing author at GoDogGO Cafe, Candles Online, FVR Publishing, Whisper and the Roar and Poets Corner.  Her works have been featured in GoDogGoCafe, Whisper and the Roar, Duane Poetree, Visual Verse, Vita Brevis, Poets Corner, Modern poetry, Spillwords Press, and coming up in Modern Literature, KOAN (Paragon Press), Dime Show review and many more. 

She recently won the 1st prize in NAMI NJ Dara Axelrod Mental Health Poetry contest. She blogs at https://meghasworldsite.wordpress.com/.