by FABIYAS M V
In her layette, she looked fair.
‘Nimisha’, the parents called her.
When aged five, the polio plucked
the strings that her legs moved.
As a stringless violin, her legs rest.
In the wheelchair, she grows up
along with her mother’s tension
and the father’s anxieties.
The rustic children wish her,
but nobody takes her
to the festival
in a shrine rural.
She wears new dress
but as the butterflies in her frock,
she also cannot flit
to the shrine yard.
Cough waves, today also,
shake her lungs so.
The distant drumbeats and the holy music
move her fingers in the wind rhythmic.
The clarion does resonate and ripple
the divine thoughts in her ears.
She never knew
pneumonia packing her soul.
Serenity of the twilight collapses,
as, again, the drum storm develops.
Few knew Nimisha swooned.
Later, the people intoned,
‘Being holy,
an apt day it is.’
In emptiness infinite,
her parents knew her truly.