Absolved in Jhelum | Day 10 | #NaPoWriMo

It had been a year

my eyes last met

your wounded glee

in the windy murmur

of thawing snows.

This April sun

wilting the plains,

there tints the

white rivulets of

Jhelum in gold.

As they sigh

down valleys and

jingle past forests,

like the ankled feet

of a gliding woman.

Apple yards of Pahalgam

must be back to flowers.

White buds lacing

shiny green canopies,

gearing for the

September harvest,

when the sweet aroma

of ripened apples

shall mask the acrid

gunpowder odour.

Cable cars like the

oval backs of ladybirds,

sure are treading the

frosty Gulmarg sky.

Taking visitors and skiiers

to Aparwath from Kungdoor,

to sprawling white acres

of frozen sea that was

crimson the last spring.

Winding alleys of Downtown

that flares up Friday noons,

with Tehreek raining stones

at the forces and their

retaliation with toxic bursts

of fire and gases;

all of it culminating in quiet

once the moon stealthily surfaces,

gleaming atop the night's still lake.

Normalcy is somehow always

imposed, restored post a furrore.

It is in the middle of a summer

that I wish to return, when you

won't have snow shawls

to hide your scars.

And unclad we will lie

between the waves of Jhelum,

our sliced backs to the Earth,

seeking luminescence

to our dreaming eyes

beneath the merciful Heaven,

against the blinding pellets

that has become our fate.

© Sobhan