I Will Return

I Will Return

-Yashraj Talan

The evening was cold and the breeze chilling

Her eyes were wet as if they were conveying

Conveying the love she had always felt,

The flurry of ecstasy she wanted to share,

The beautiful smile she would forever bear.

Bear the smile with an aimless sight,

Unaware of the world and its enduring plight.

She wanted to be one with his soul for eternity

To feel the flutter of heartbeats racing,

The joy of unity and incessant gazing

Into his eyes, deep and hazy.

O Time do stop and the moment freeze,

Was all she was asking at the brink of peace,

Let this maze of life never end,

Let his hands be in mine at length,

Let me for this once get my worth,

Let no tears bring pain to his world.

Let us share our happiness a little more,

Let every pain, every fear perish

Be buried into an abyss, never to return any more.

He looked at her and their eyes met.

He held her arms and forgot the mess,

The mess of gory, of war, of life

That was to part and destroy two lives

Whose crime for sufferance was to have loved,

To have promised to protect for having fallen in love

And walk in togetherness come what may

But today, he had to go, go away to cast off the clouds of dismay.

“I will return,” his stammering voice could hardly speak.

She looked down, had she grown so weak,

So weak to lose her trust, the trust she put in him devoid of buts?

Why was she such a maudlin, why losing faith,

Faith in his promise, true words of her soul mate?

The man stood up and spoke one last time,

“I will return again,” he told her with a smile

And he walked away, far away

With a gun in hand to face the violence, all unafraid,

To destroy the barriers that separated the world,

That had stained it with fear and blood.

With violent thuds of a sniper’s bullets

The man collapsed in the mayhem’s bash.

His courage was failing; his body tired,

Tired of struggling in the combat.

He remembered his promise, his promise of return

To her company of bliss, but he could not live to his word.

He sighed in the throes of the piercing pain

The pain of bullets and his heart’s longing too faint,

Too faint to be heard, too faint to be entertained.

And thus his soul left behind all pain

And flew above into light, high above the clouds bringing rain−

Washing away the red, all the red of pain.

Hearing of her loss the girl could not bear,

Out of the thirst to meet him she stood up in despair

And jumped into battle with a desire to be fair,

To be fair to his valiant efforts and his every promise

Of to give her the world at the moment’s notice.

She felt a searing pain of a bullet’s pierce

That hit her chest and down she fell

To leave the struggle and battle of life so fierce.

Perhaps the limits of time could never have stopped the two

For they met in heaven, their souls so true

So true to their commitments and love for each other

That not even God could distance them from each other.

They loved and lived for a wonderful eternity

And showed the world that love, indeed, is true.