Poetry 2016 Shortlist, Neelam Harpalani

I Begin When I End

There’s no evidence to life, there’s no proof to existence.
There’s only a perception of seeing black turn pink,
A failing attempt to fill-in the empty basket with colours of beautiful.
The night in my eyes is hid behind the dawn in your eyes.
The picture you adore is an illusion of what you’d like to see.
Your memory of me is what lives in the mirror of your bedroom.
Come, creep into my head for a while, and feel the tremors of denial.
The denial to a one time end.
Denial to the breaking down of frightening nerves.
Oh and the denial to seeking comfort under the same roof,
With strangers in my head and no sight of you, every night, is the hardest of all.
You feel alive. I feel the under-current of being alive.
I see it. Clear as crystal and real as faith.
Sitting by my window, swinging back and forth,
With mild jerks of deceiving life,
Up, there, rests my soul.
Somewhere in the cloud, closed and locked, with no key to the front door.
The doorway to it was build years ago, just beneath my trembling feet,
Passing through the betraying shame, crushing the inevitable pain,
Rolling down the slopes of a guilty conscience, Peeling away the masks of all that lived, loved, laughed.
Escalating to the point of silence. Peaceful silence.
And alive it feels, to out-live the illusion of being alive.
” Oh, I see it. Clear as crystal and real as faith.
Sitting by my window, swinging back and forth,
With mild jerks of deceiving life, Up, there, rests my soul.
Somewhere in the cloud, closed and locked, With no key to the front door.”