Everyday I walk home alone through old market
which has the colour and smell of tapioca skin.
As I enter, all enterprises of men and women stops
and enter into a state of murkiness.
Everything goes still and motionless like a photograph.
I move forward, a timid sheep
Fleeces of my curly, kinky thoughts goes overdrive.
each step becomes heavy and uneven
At the bottom of sweaty rocky forehead
Nose stuck onto face like an unusual mussel.
river in my lips and in my mouth dry up.
In my chest a fish suffocates to death.
every inch of me relish in being a theatre of misfortune,
large morgue of dreams.
Customers had forgotten their lists and purpose.
Beggars aren't lamenting anymore.
a dog whimpers at me, cursing me,
that their world has come to a peculiar pause.
Infinite eyes grazing on my flesh
hot breath probing on my bare shoulders
I feel stripped under steam of gaze
and it stings my consciousness.
too terrified to breath, to move any of these limbs.
Afraid to think a thought, ashamed to feel a feeling
Beneath innumerable eyes
I'm an exotic animal in the menagerie.
somehow, everyday, I make it to home
without collapsing on soiled path
As I reach the end of it
I see their bodies being restored to brimming life.
© Muhammed Nadeer
