Anakha B
INSPIRED SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
The Last Gasp
You drown into the spiral of life
that was never meant to be-
trying to not sell metaphors of being alive
Yet, you dig your fingernails
into the cracked earth,
the skin underneath cringing at
every filthy revelation
shouting the time you held their faces,
felt their jawlines
inside your palms
only to crush their skulls
that erode with your souring breath.
You keep looking through the hollow frame
that once held your memory map,
telling every stranger
that their name reminds you of something,
somebody,
a mysterious woman,
a funny man
who once was your favourite neighbourhood.
You repeat their name.
Hanging in there with your mouth parted,
gobbling the emptiness in the eyes of the person
standing in front of you
like a poison
and failing to sense it to be a sign of unfamiliarity.
You were never into reading people anyway.
(Does finding their eyeballs floating in pointlessness
and mouths making weird shapes count?)
Aren’t we all humans with similar stories?
World spinning, days crashing, poles kissing-
winning, rotting, embracing the hollowness and bones.
People laugh--
As their collective madness makes you dance on high tides
on full moon days
waves crashing the sand castles from your past,
the last glance at it collapsing
before grabbing your hand;
a forever lost in the sea of faces.
No last words.
No witnesses.
No faces to remember.