Stricken

My mind had been still, like a clear night sky.

Some stars sprinkled even.

So I slept in peace, unsuspecting.

But I awoke, in the 'middle of the night' mahurat

The way they have in stories of myth.

That time of ghosts and ominous things.

It must have been like a loudclap of thunder

or blinding lightening, just behind my lids

Amplified millionfold in the land of Hypnos

Like an Indra lying in wait,

sharpening his quiverful of bolts

on a trumpeting Airavat.

No, like a hundred angry Indras

on a hundred angry Airavats

Lightning, trumpeting, lightning, trumpeting

My eardrums shattered, my world ripped,

I lay there, perfect darkness about me.

Then, out of the skies of my past

the first drops came.

A big thought of you,

and another, and another

until my face was drenched, with salty rain.

Before I knew, what pillar to hold

Drops became walls of water.

There was no stopping the deluge that night.

There was no saving my dams that night.

I would have to sink or swim,

Through this flash flood of emotion.

My heart shook, my limbs too,

I perhaps genuflected in bed too.

But memories were in no mood for mercy,

So I waited and let wash upon me

wave upon wave of our time together.

Your smiles flickered across the skies,

teeth flashing amidst rolling clouds.

Past happinesses projected now

in tear-jerking shades of grey.

While the storm of 'us' danced the tandav dance

breaking my walls like dominos.

In the churning oceans of thought

I tossed about and counted hours

till the sun of my present rose again.

I started all over again,

with the stricken remains of my will to forget.