A Machine of Grief

You should have realized that the faces of your childhood

which you romantise conceal so much madness, so much

pain. And that you only had to go back in your mind to see

the signs. When you were five the man who used to drive

the van to ferry you and other neighbourhood children

committed suicide. Your mother told you he is driving

a truck now. You didn’t question her. You didn’t know what

death meant or what caused it. You heard whispers

of how your much older cousin which you have met but once,

had married a man whose parents didn’t accept her

because she wasn’t their kind, not from their community.

But you didn’t know because this was the limit of your

world and you knew no other.You didn’t really know what

different was and that you would be different once you

step out. Now you know that laughter is rare,pain more

frequent. You see the violet hills with a sadness in your guts.

and the morning mist intensifies the loneliness of your

existence. And when you walk the walk you have been 

taking as long as you had learnt to walk, you walk briskly 

as though you are trying to escape from some kind of
absence, the echo of decay. While your life is disintegrating, 

even that assumes a rhythm. Melancholy becomes a 

habit the mind exercises. You have become a machine of grief.