Relic

Nothing remains, but a relic of identity. A home ravaged by knives and guns, spattering blood, books, and bangles. The strike knows no barriers. When it hits, it takes them all. A home, once unlocked by its people, nourished and nurtured by sounds, smells and songs, becomes a cave of rubble, cracks and cobwebs. For passersby to ignore. For onlookers to wonder. For belongings to burn. For breathing souls to flee. But the relic stays. It hangs, abandoned, and comatose. It stands out in irrelevance, braving the vagaries of weather - a pale brick red, above pools of cleaned, dried, and now disappeared, blood. The rust, building month after month, year after year, parallels the silent, relentless effort of the mind, to bury trauma. The thoughts of birth, childhood, marriage, love, quarrels, and stories, once shared by a home, live on as flickering images, as relics of a once-thriving identity. Homes do take birth and do die. They are not here to stay. They do not stay for as long as we think. To have four walls alive is freedom. To leave behind a relic, a phenomenon.