Tuesday 20 September 2011

Crowded yet empty streets




The streets are crowded but the heart is empty… 
There are shouts and screams that scatter and buzz,
But the thud of the fearful heart mutes all noise… 


The city that was once welcoming with its intermixed cultures and societies
The one that seemed glorious in the shining sun…
Was only one face that she’d known and believed in…
Before the tainted glasses of crashing reality pierced through her…


A gunshot,
A rape,
A murder… 


Words that swept past her, like swift winds slashing through her…


Victim of eve-teasing,
Molestation,
Humiliated… 


Tears of uneasiness accompanies her every night…


Only because she was a girl ?


The city opened its doors of opportunities,
But came in the uncontrollable flood of indecent, immoral crowd….


Living between the golden beams of hopes,
And darkening reality,
She tries to gather herself,
Trying to make the best out of what she has… 


Her friends, 
Work,
Studies… 


Smiles and little moments of laughter and happiness, 
Fill her day and occupy her mind for good…


But every look out of the window,
Every stare that glances past her…
Makes her boil with anger…


An anger she tries to resist:
The fear that got irritated by its prolonged presence,
Now turned into rage… 
She asks herself, 
If she had the right to live,
The right to breathe peacefully,
The right to be treated as an individual…


Answers to which no one speaks…


The dance, 
The songs,
The life in interconnected lights daze her,
Her life is filled with her wishes and hopes…


But the scar of unsafe streets 
And mistreatment
Glows red time and again…


She lives, 
Trying to breathe 
Through the mist of uncertainties… 


The streets are still crowded,
But her heart is empty…