asifa.

- Antara Agarwal

 I met Asifa’s soul  that day,  at the edge of the  premonitory forest fondly stroking a fidgety colt, her eyes were the only thing peaceful about her;  they had this glaze to them yet they were so clear  so sharp  so rooted to reality I almost forgot she wasn’t actually standing there. almost. her exhausted skin, it screamed for attention,  for reversing touch; it yearned for all those fancy capsules, fancy balms that instantaneously took the pain away, because she hurt. she told me about a foal, she said he was her friend, who had twisted his leg and  collapsed on a spilled sac of rusted nails, neighed in agony till he couldn’t anymore. she told me she hurt more. her plum frock, it slapped against her purpled knees bemused, she put her ears to the  remnants  of the butter yellow flowers on it and nodded, looked up to me; she said her frock wanted to  be tied to the highest cedar in Kashmir so  the holes in it could capture the  weak sun and know  what it feels like to be warm  and complete again,  temporarily nevertheless. the marooned threads  of her severed underwear furiously nudged  the plum frock to hang itself on the  mightiest mountain in Kashmir instead so  it could warm quicker. how were shreds of cloth to know that  those mountains were actually the iciest. she  suddenly stopped caressing the walnut colt and  looked at her tiny hands, “I’m tired” she whispered. “Tired of holding, holding ideas I do not understand; orange  and green,  I never wanted  them to be thrown into my hands; red  and black, I never wanted  to catch them in the first place; what happened to white, though. I was never  going to come back here anyway but  for these hands,  she continued, these hands miss  holding mother’s as  we skipped through the orchard to pick up  fallen apples; these hands, they  search for Abbu’s  but I cannot  see him, anymore. I cannot  hear the rattle  of the toy  Abbu had once bought for me. I think he ran away, I think he was afraid to see the  warzone valley reflect its  charisma  on me. I think they all were afraid.” . I know I wasn’t  blinded by rage, fettered in haplessness  that day; I know I wasnt hallucinating but i met Asifa’s soul that day, and her peaceful eyes let go of  the last tear that happened to smudge the last  chalk line of her game as  she hopscotched on stale graves into the premonitory forest.