“don”t sleep
the day is your turn”
Vijayalakshmi
Translation, Illustration : Mrudula Bhavani
THIS night,one pestered dead body told me,
“Can”t you see the gun pinned
on my hands?
No, that gun is not mine. That gun is not mine.
I am ignorant about the bullets,
Except the one pierced my body.
Those diary etnries are also not mine,
those added on hit lists.
I got killed; but see I am not a moron.
If so,
I too want to see, the hellish unwritten diary
that got disappeared,
that added our names in the hit list.
Now I know, after my death,
after meeting the corpses
rotten, dried up, crumbled and
wounded corpses
they told me,
about the guns they pinned on their hands,
after the fight,
after the death, after the fake encounter.
about those pictures they captured
humiliated them.
about the romanticized diary etnries
(made-up)
written in their names.
Corpses never lie.
We are thet ruth.
We are the onlyt ruth.
But what corpses can do?
One thing-
Though you defame our bodies through pictures-
the way we lay down after death, soaked in blood
on pale newspaper pages, on news boards, on idle mini screens
after erasing us from your days,after all,
at night,
our bloodstains would bloom
on the clean surface of the most innocent mirrors.
Until the sunrise, they will whisper
on each waking up ear,
“don”t sleep
the day is your turn”