Written piece
Fear. Love. Duty.
Muskan .
India
About this piece
What's it like when threads of fear, love & duty all tug at once? Set in the pandemic, this poem explores a doctor-mother pulled taut between her public oath & private devotion — facing a deadly crisis while aching to cradle her crying baby without bringing the contagion home.
Fear. “Love”. Duty.
I close my eyes to the faint tune,
a rhythmic solace being hummed beneath the shadowed moon.
Suddenly, the lyrics of the bell tower were a song afar,
subdued by the little laughter of a little angle behind a tinted glass.
So serene, so sublime but only till the bell chimes.
Then the glass shatters, another knock and another feather of the bird sheds asunder.
The white doors swing open,
wheels screeching over the stone trodden.
A lone prayer beseeching the winds, rises high above the clarion caws
but a deadly whisper wraps around my ears like honed claws.
T’ was not its fate to be heeded like many others
like many others, now your time has come.
The color on the walls of my heart grows darker as the wheels grow near
From a shade of red I do not find familiar.
The metal string tightens around my throat
With each step taken towards the empty woes.
“You could stop and let it loosen.”
No, you mustn’t.
So, I again kneel before the king
when my cell phone rings.
A piercing cry invades the palace of sapphires
Beware, my fingers could near her.
Another coat of red, but this reflects across my bare chest
Go to her and add a number to my army of the dead.
I hear the crib creaking beneath her weight.
Hark! The pleas of the mother that never abate.
But my house has been awake, night and day.
You cannot leave no matter what may lay.
“Just this once, go home and cradle her in your arms.”
So soon she could rock in my blanket of harms.
“Go home, sing her a lullaby of the past.”
So that it could become her last.
You pledged me your loyalty.
“The coat weighs on your shoulders, heavily.”
Knock, knock, may I come in?
Just so to remind you there is no place for mercy within.
Your oath is a solemn promise
“But she is your lifelong wish.”
Then who should I be in this ending yet lasting night?
A mother or a savior? Or both can’t I be?