Breath

By Rachita Panda

How excruciating it is! 
Can't a breath know when it has to end before it does?
How can the same place house the ever lasting fragrance of love and the aching pain of loss?
Was it supposed to be this hard? 
Or did it only have to make you realize how much more love there was, 
after it's all lost, in the skies, I'd pray, I never look at! 
Do the walls have to echo the whispers that don't exist now? 
Does the heart know it still beats?
Does the sky still feel infinite enough to look at,
when you know the one you looked at it with, 
won't ever see it again? 

A voice asks, "Are you the carcass of the sweet atmosphere that existed here?" 
"Has even that fragrance abandoned you?"

All it hears is silence. 
Is it the truth you always knew but never dared to believe?
is it the one? 
The one that says that the only certainty of the greatest uncertain,
shows up, only to take you light years apart, 
yet not far enough from the one who's known your love but never belonged here.
As it is, no one ever does.

The garden's abandoned because there's still the touch left,
of the hands that once held yours in them.
The eyes are shut.
All the hands care about now is the subtle, aching comfort
they find in the photograph they hold.

All they want to see is life. 
and maybe they can only do it when shut.

And this untamed, lost heart asks:
I was made only to beat for my breath, is my breath lost?!