Renderings Of A Mute Heart

In the name of love

He was deep in sorrow and looked like he lost his way home, so much devotion dripped from his eyes that I felt ashamed in the Scarlett dress, I took his slender fingers and said "I understand" that was a lie among the hundred lies that I weaved in an endless loom until yesterday... Until yesterday I was unmarried, stuck, completely dumbfounded and desperate to be loved, today I am here, married and mistook as he breaks the glass of my dream with a hammer one hit at a time, gently.
He carefully replaces me with another woman in his words, all I deem mine has been already taken. I don't cry for myself as I much for the young man before me, burdened under the fragile weight of honour.

A few months passed,
The new bride curled in a burrow and dodged by all.
" But why did you return?" this question rang in all the houses in our street.
I did not answer. What would I say?
The man I married was in love with another woman, so vulnerable, so pitiful and so beautiful I could not summon her right for I loved him more than that.

Months passed and we still talked sometimes, mostly him thanking me for the tremendous favour I bestowed on him, I would blush and expand, smile and gather his words like a toad collects air before a dive and then he would hang up, all the walls would fall again, there I would be twenty years old, drowned in the idea of true love.
My sister slapped hard across my face, she cried "you'd kill Baba! You are foolish! You are being ridiculous, he is a man Saboor, they have a memory of goldfish, once you offer yourself to him he would forget her...you have..."

I do not know what she spoke ahead of that, offer him myself, I had done that, though it wasn't how she puts it, it was late and humid, he had been smoking a dozen of drags and I have been his shoulder to shelter "do you hear me?" she snapped her fingers.

"he is in love with her and he won't betray her" I moved to the window as she hits her head hard. Somewhere they all understood he was deeply in love or somewhere they all knew I was foolish to let him go but I was proud to be the helping hand, to let my love go and find his true happiness yet inside I silently prayed that he would return to me...
The silent invocation became a fist and punched through me as I glanced at the divorce papers, I cried asmy family condemned the existence of a woman who left her partner to mate with his paramour.

Four months of the most radical suffering passed and before I could hold my head in my hands that very hand was in somebody else's hold.

Majid, the shepherd,
I was taken to miles away to his village, he was my punishment, a life sentence from Baba for savouring such extreme notions about the power of love. As he took me to his cottage in the deep meadows of green and blue, I thought obsessively yet about Zain, his slender fingers, the cigarette between them, his starlit eyes heaving like the faded moon, his raining tears in love, his careful curls he so lovingly made every morn and lastly I thought about how we made love that night silently as he grieved and I blushed.

I footed the wooden cottage, it was so remote and mislaid that none could reach here but the native. I ate of what he gave me, he spoke of nothing, he brought two young girls in and introduced me as their new Ma, the expression or affliction or any anguish had drained into the uncountable tears I had wept back in time. I did not greet back. I was mute to all. I had carefully gathered the face of Zain so as to not forget him, Majid became the sore of my eye, a disturbance to my trance, I did not give away anything, nor speech not sigh.

Life ties you to the barrel of existence and you have to keep spinning it.
Majid was painfully average in every way, I did not look at him but with time I knew him in the darkness of the bed. He was broad, round and his hands were not slender but sturdy and roughly covered in scaths, white marks lined his back from pulling ropes and sacks. He had a rough voice but he seldom spoke so I never knew what expression was on his face or what he was really for that matter. When I was largely suffocated by him, I asked him to take me home, on returning I realised that home was no longer mine, it provoked a pain like throwing a cloth in thorns and then pulling it out mercilessly. I was torn, weary wounded...and pregnant.
I still thought about Zain, still regretted having left him to his love but then again I would smile that somewhere someone is with who he loves and a sudden warmth would cover me that he is happy.