The Broken Wing

By Aashka Parashar

I don't usually leave my room in rage but especially today, out of the seventeen summers that have warmed my skin and the eighteen winters that have chilled my bones, an irrevocable urge to fill an incoherent void, drove me away from what I'd have called 'Home' a few years back, until my mother's untimely demise.

They've been telling me that she's in a better place now. I believe

them. She must be. A better place. Anywhere but here.

I ran and ran in mad rage, blind rage, ran to the point where I realised that it's actually grief and not rage, that I have in my heart for years. I could never hold her by hand and ask her who she really was because I was too afraid. Too afraid that if she confronts me, I might never be able to accuse and hate my father for my mother's death and my miserable state of being, afraid that grief might teach me forgiveness and consequently vanish the bitterness that is so deeply rooted in my soul. 

Had I let her convince me that I don't actually need a silhouette to point my accusing finger towards, but a shoulder to rest my head on and a gentle embrace to soothe my scars, calm my screams, I'd become weak. I'd become weak and seek help and need people. And people don't stay. I'd lost home and people don't become home. For life is like a long train journey and while you inevitably love some stops and need some stays, you don't build homes on stations. And no co-passenger travels with you to your destination. Everyone has their own.

So, I kept running, running, screaming loudly outside and louder inside. And in between these two intolerable screams, there was a deafening silence. And believe it or not, I wasn't as bothered by the screams as by the silence because it quietly stared me in the eyes and told me that if there's one person who owes me an apology, it's me myself. Nobody else has been as cruel to me as me myself and I ran from it because I knew it was right. Yet it doesn't yell at me or call me names.

Why not?

"How was this one tiny portion of my mother's silence overtaking my father's violence?"

So I ran, ran to the point of breathlessness and stopped in front of a far-fetching meadow, greenery as far as my eyes could go,and clouds, fragmented like cotton candies. Soft breeze making the little flower heads on the ground sway left and right. A gentle blow eased my anxiety too. I closed my eyes and smelled the unadulterated scent of divine-like flaura.

"How my mother would have loved this one."

 I lied on my back in the middle of the enchanting oblivion, facing the sky, playing with my imaginary canvas with the clouds, wondering how had I never been here in seventeen years. A butterfly caught my glance, brought me back into the real world. 

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

 "The butterfly or the world?"

I saw a slight tear in the left corner of its right wing. It's an espresso-brown butterfly with blue patches in the centre of both wings. The prettiest one I've ever seen. I reflexively got up and tried to catch it. Failing, trying, failing again but trying tirelessly. 

It's been a habit. I need to have what doesn't want to be mine. I must.

I caught it. I looked at the tear in its wing and my grip got tender, unconsciously.

I let it go. It left no colour stains behind but It left me in awe. In awe of its remarkable beauty and its remarkable strength. 

"It won't last long. Beautiful things are fragile", my father would've said.

My mother died proving him wrong. 

"How she'd have loved this one".

She must be in a better place now. 

A dandelion just nodded its head. 

By Aashka Parashar