TWO CANVASES OF PAIN

We both paint our sky in 

different shades of blue 

just like the way we paint pain_ 

Yours is in golden lines of red, bubble gum scented resurrection of a demised memory.

Yours knitting stories out of a color box your father gifted you on your seventh birthday while your smile was still pure. 

Yours with a touch of stained towel in the kitchen sink, so tattered that it should be forgotten 

Yours about home sick pigeons and broken tooth, both you think of in silence 

Yours in the light of the moon you stitched on the locket of your favorite shirt. 

Yours in statics of the Bengal famine no one remembers now 

Yours in the sweat of a nightmare which made your lungs search for air.

Yours in cremated bargains to a vegetable vendor since words dumped you in the middle of the street. 

Yours in the softness of a lilac flannel your first love gifted on Valentine's.

Yours in the scent of an auspicious Eid night when you visited your friend .

Yours in the chocolate flavored cake you didn't mind to taste on Mother's day .

Yours in the dryness of the paper flowers you made on your sisters birthday 

Yours in the colours you know and you don't because you call pain "poetry". 

Mine in black. 

Black and blank.

Because pain taught me to fall

not to glow. 

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