Beyond The Invincible Silence Poem by Joycee Dimple

“Do you have a count of the days I lived in pain?
Or of those inundated tears I shed in vain?
Do you witness my solitary nights so sleepless?
Is it my destiny you endorsed or my fate so ruthless?
What have I done to face such insurmountable fears?
And fight against this strife of death through all these years.
Am I bearing the yoke of your sins in the murky night?
Is it a morbid nightmare; or yet another form of my fright?
Am I the sun that set before its rise,
or a sinless lamb you bore to sacrifice?
Am I the forbidden tapestry’s evening star named Yvaine,
Or a fallen star who can never shimmer or shine?
Am I a budding rose that lost its beauty and fragrance,
or a sonnet of loss with no words but invincible silence? ”

There lived a star named Yvaine. The firmament dropped her to earth and the earth returned her to dust. The brief moments of life she captured on this planet were not memorable to her or of any gain. Her foot prints on earth got washed off with every dropp of rain. People said that she was born with a deadly virus and that she was abominable and untouchable. But was that her mistake really? She was not old enough to understand that her parents not only gave her flesh and blood but a legacy of death in the form of HIV virus. Yet she was strong enough to fight for life until she turned to dust. She inherited death from a careless father who traded their lives for sensual pleasures with the harlots on highway and embraced the pain from an ignorant mother who couldn’t protect her own life. Those innocent eyes were full of questions, silhouetted behind the invincible silence.

They say what comes from earth must return to earth, but all she wanted to know was if there wasn’t a better form of life there should be a better form of death. One evening the sky looked so empty and the evening star called Yvaine was not there. It was not the virus that engulfed her but the sullenness of the planet’s creatures that turned her to ashes. All she ever wanted to ask was “Was that my mistake really? ”

We find millions of such falling stars everywhere. More than the HIV virus that disables their immune system slowly and steadily it’s our ignorance and aversion towards such people that devastates them faster. If we choose not to love them we ought to choose not to hate them either.

I dedicate this post to all those innocent children across the world, both quick and the dead, who have fallen prey for the HIV virus.