She had a name. But it became an epitaph.
When it was brandished on these trembling walls like blood on a crime scene.
The soul you left cemented on the soil that now stinks with the absence of her breaths, was not yours to take.
Her steps that you caught in your palms and strangled, were to be imprinted on the ocean beds, not the drool in your mouth.
Did the red sea of blood between her legs and the crescent around your eyes not pray that you would not make her a body a shrine but only a morgue?
Did the screams from her mouth like gunfire not make you put the gun inside your own mouth?
Did the quake in her bones not stir your conscience to believe you were not welcomed inside her but just an intruder?
Did the tears from her eyes not pelt you hard enough to make you want to hold your breath so you wouldn’t drown?
Now, the demons that followed her, dance to your name.
They shall walk with your head in their mouths until they can chew your conscience up.
The ghosts she feared recognising as her friends, will haunt your days like trespassers in your peace of mind.
They shall take her soiled scarf and wrap her innocence in it like a present, you ripped apart.
Then, they shall whisper in your ears all the ways death wants to greet you so it can burn your eyes and disfigure your soul.
Your soul whose form was broken, like sour-metal that you yielded it into a knife, cutting everything soft it could find.
But little did you know, you cannot cut through the echoes her existence made, the ripples her heart brought, with the barbed wires on your mouth.
Do not think for a second, the shadows did not see your claws come out on seeing the moon on her skin.
Your hands might have skinned her body, butchered her spirit but your tongue cannot break her essence.
It floods in the strength of every room holding a weeping mother in front of whose eye’s death prays.
Only death has made its peace with the dead but for you, it shall always pray.
For death is a testament to your shame, that these walls harbour.
And the birth marks your fangs gave her, death reads them out as a eulogy and a warning sign: Keep away.
She has a name. It is not an epitaph.
~ Maha Baig (@whereflowersbloom_)
