'a love, never made'

Have you ever wondered, if the 'special someone' that we think about, truly does exist? What if he/she thinks about us too? We have never come across him/her all this while or may be we did, but the love we have for that imaginary face or illusion, isn't it pure? This piece is about two such people, both of them special to each other. They've never met or seen each other. They don't even know how the other person looks like, but their love is still  meaningful. Who knows, they might end up together in life, for real, or they might settle for someone else. Their  love would be a success if they do meet, but if they don't, it would still exist, but like a painting that was never finished.

Shuffling through the papers,
He takes a brief pause,
To think about HER, and he smiles,
Imagining a face, he has never seen.

Half a world across,
She is waiting tables,
Thinking about him on a horse, dressed as a cowboy.
Rolling her hair, she chuckles,
She doesn't know, how he looks.

He looks at the sun,
Slowly hiding behind the clouds,
Wishing if she was here,
He would do the same.
And he stares into the air,
Like its her eyes,
He is looking into.

She walks along the alley,
Smiling at the couples, she sees,
Wondering how long before he comes to her,
To take her into his arms,
For her to feel the world.
And with a deep breath,
She hugs the cold air,
Spiraling her hands, around herself.

He is in the balcony,
Breathing his cigarette, softly,
When a cold breeze splashes his face,
With a warm feeling of being wanted.
He closes his eyes, wondering,
What she looks like, the girl, who is all over his mind.

Her focus has gone,
From the book that she holds,
To a fiction of her own,
A story that she so wants to live.
She sips her coffee,
Looking out of the window,
At the moon, wondering,
If he's looking at it too.

Spread across oceans and skies,
This love often mesmerizes me,
Of how it binds two different people,
Sometimes by chance, and sometimes,
As if the universe is behind it.

The night crawls slowly,
and the whole world falls back, to rest,
Well, this is just another love story,
Of two people, who never met.

- Azad Hussain @ smokeofsulphur.blogspot.in

I combust.

Deep inside in everybody's subconscious,we keep searching the reasons for our existence, asking for a better and meaningful life. We build a world around what we want, we decorate it with what we need, and we dream. But when we wake up to the reality of life, everything collapses to dust.

- Azad Hussain @ smokeofsulphur.blogspot.in

A random two minute poem.

DEATH, is it really so scary?

He never entered an empty lift because the fear of it freely falling to the ground with him alone was dreadful. He would rather walk down the staircase which seemed a little less dangerous. He would constantly keep a watch on the speedometer when he was driven to work by his driver, constantly whispering in his ear to drive slowly. The fear of death in him had reached a height where everything around him pushed his mind to the idea of something coming for him, to end his life.

He was a successful entrepreneur, married to a beautiful woman and blessed with two little girls who meant the world to him. He had worked hard to own the luxury he lived in, from walking door to door to sell cosmetics to working 24 hours a day, and now he headed a company which had its shares soaring high each day. He was compassionate and full of life, a party animal, and a need-no-invitation guest at every party in the town, and may be that was the reason he had the fear of it all ending. He did not wish to live for decades together or the immortality, but the fear in him was of how cruel death would be to him. His subconscious was overflowing with the thoughts of how uncertain life is and how everything could end like a dream when death would wake him up in another world.

He was different when he was a kid, cheerful and fun loving, the most loved kid in the neighborhood, until the accident that took his parents away from him. He saw it happen as he walked out of his school gate towards the car his parents were waiting in, excited about his first day at school. It was a drunk truck-driver who saw him on the road at the last minute and steered right into the car his parents waited in. He was too small to understand the turn of events at that time but as he grew up, he started blaming himself for the death of his parents. His parents had paid with their lives for him to escape death once but he knew it would come again, in search of him, like it comes, for everyone.

Saturday morning, the roads were not much crowded like they are every morning, with office cabs, motorbikes and autorikshaws zooming on the roads as the working class rushed to their condensed office cubicles. He jogged along the footpath, feeling the wind on his face, and dodging potholes and electric poles, a regime he had started to keep himself fit and healthy. He stopped at a bus stop to take a two minute rest, sitting in a corner seat beside few school kids, debating on which superhero is the best. As he brushed his t-shirt to wipe away the sweat on his face he observed a kid, dressed shabbily, crossing the road and walking towards the bus stop, holding a white cane in his hand. The kid carried a bag on his back which had the books poking out from it, at one end, a striking symbol of his status.

He jumped to his feet as he saw a car speed at a distance, possibly to make it before the signal turned red which had the green light 'blinking' with the screen above it on a countdown, ' 0 5'. He raced towards the road, to save the kid who by now was in the middle of the road, struggling with his cane to find the way. The sound was loud as the car screeched away from him, leaving him on the ground in a state where he felt no pain but he couldn't feel most of his body. He slightly turned his head to see that he had pushed the kid back in time who now moved his hands on the tarmac to find his cane, which parted from him during the fall.

His vision was clouded, and his senses, numb. He felt immense pain as the blood gushed out of his body but he couldn't scream. All of his life flashed in front of him, his parents,wife, daughters, failures, success, and his fear, of death. Amidst the voices of the crowd that slowly started gathering around him, his own heartbeat was louder than his screams. With eyes staring at the sky, and a vision blurred by tears, he wondered how he could gather so much courage, such that he could actually think of opposing a speeding car. He knew he was a different person few minutes back or was he? The questions that he asked himself all this while, of how it would end for him, were being answered. He looked at the kid who touched his hand to feel his presence and sat down right next him, unaware of what has happened. The whole meaning of life and death changed for him as he thought of how worse the things could have been had he not rushed to this kid, who couldn't see with his eyes. He could feel his life being sucked out, drop by drop, breath by breath as his heart trembled under his chest to keep him alive for a little while more. He wasn't afraid of it anymore, the end, because he knew it couldn't have been any better for he got a chance to do what his parents did for him; to give life after death. His heart was on the verge of giving up but he forced a smile, at his thoughts and all those times when he tried to be overly conscious as if death was following him everywhere.

"Are you fine, sir? ", the kid asked in a whimpering voice, with his head bowed down and his eyes, closed.

" I very much am", he struggled to answer, brushing the kid's hair with his fingers, which fell lifelessly to the ground, minutes later.

- Azad Hussain @smokeofsulphur.blogspot.in