Never Meant to Be And Tears at Aphelion

By Amrita Valan

Never Meant to Be

The sands of too many lifetimes intervene
one can no longer retrace footsteps
to the fatal turning point
that separates  
those meant to be
each other's courage, comfort
Holiest dreams.
Each other's fire and desire
the wheel remorseless turns 
The relentless gyre 
rearranges forces
In shapes dire. 

Now a natal pull of 
past destiny
brings unbidden diamond to lashes
Flicking away this dew 
I refuse to cry 
If meant for love's full moon,
We shall meet again.
Or, if sorrow be the cast
of this eternal  die, in
Another lifetime we shall try.

And a faint harsh whisper
cleaves barren wind
"Not for lack of scrying,
thick sanded walls of destiny
the innumerable grains cement 
my love
yet renders you blind 
to me
and the path we were on 
Red vaporous blood dust of rebirths
and deaths
The very bones reclaimed too many times
Once more, and then perhaps, again?"

I hear you faint... a receding wail
I flick my hair and regard the veil
time is a cruel groom 
And space its lonesome bride,

Yet...

My earrings attract  
a softer different light
My eyes hold it too,
Timeless tender pools, 
Your call unravels my 
cocooned soul.

Never to meet
nor, even to bid goodbye.
Never blame. It was not
for lack of trying.

I entrust myself in 
the fate I found
Wandering roads, pulling 
farther away each day
from homeward bound. 

At night, when trembling 
 Venus torches the tenebrous sky
Regard my kiss in it, 
Twinkling, I bid goodnight. 

Tears at Aphelion

If God wants me to come in my own time
Then I suspect I'm immortal
For at fifty. what gift left to unravel
I'm empty wrapping paper
And there never was something
Substantial inside, just a softness
Of heart, just a broadness of mind.
Most children are born with that.

I'm going soft, a different way now.
Runny, over easy, a broken egg mess.
Blurry vision blurry features
Slack muscles
Brain a blip that's intermittent fade in fade out
What do you think?
Am I going to flatline into the lovely land
Of Nihil?
Where Null and Void cancel each other
To Nada?

To nonsense rhythmic lucid dreaming
Brutal cabals of cavemen wearing suits
Holding spears and harpoons?

Dancing, forever frozen
Silhouetted shadow on the rock
Of prehistory.
Forever solitary in a herd?

Imagine me as a 
lass 
Future offspring
Of my forbears
If I survive ages
By writing about mine

And in 
Blood bedazzled
Before I fall, I

Write on the wall,
Time's last victim
A scribe.

Pillages by plunderers
May salvage some 
Poetic sense
But it was all a fallacy 
It was all heartbroken
Teeth gnashing, mad mitochondrial
Keening, my lysosomes
Doing their suicide bag thing.

A wondrous autophagy
Creating cannibalistic sense
Of an upended destiny.

Dreams degrading as they
Disappear
Perhaps, is all it was.

My etched chiselled 
Poetry consigned 
Into maws of time,
 A black hole future 
Unseen. 

In reverse entropy, am  
Positron.
Negative energy
As positive charge,

Shred the inked shrouds 
Of my bloodletting. 

Sweating profuse
Abject confessions.

I am confused at the 
Altar of submitting, 
Tears at the aphelion
of elided destiny.

Amrita Valan is a writer from India with two published books, Arrivederci Fifty Poems, and a collection of 17 short stories, In Between Pauses. She has had numerous poems and short stories published in international online journals and anthologies.