Blood-Red Grapes

I dream of blood soaked feet, days before it actually spills over my clothes. The blood red dreams found way to my sleepy eyes as any other month. The dream was not too lengthy, Feet sunk in a pool of blood, and my reason reminded, its routine. Then I saw the grapevine entangling my legs and the small leaves sprouting to life. The hands of the vines found its roots inside my belly. I heard it clear, the plant called me ‘mumma’.

The death of my child who never called me mother was not a sudden thunder upon my spring. He kept telling me every day, I will miss you and I will wait for you. 

I was half ripe when I found him, and still unripe while losing him. I do not remember the way he found me. But I knew he would, for he was where I belonged, for he was who I am. 

He first informed his arrival, beating up the little heart within the home he built inside me. It was so loud that I kept on listening to it, no matter, to whom all I talked . 

In a fine Sunday, he called me 'mumma', like an annoyed child, screaming and wailing. He wanted to know where I was going. 

‘I am here’- I assured. He wanted me to go inside, into his own little house, sleep with him, folding the hands in a prehistoric fashion, hiding it between the heart and knees. I didn’t know the way to his home, but I told him ‘It’s all me’.

The day,  the red rose in my garden blossomed, I found it all inside my nostrils. I sent some to him. But it was all air bubbles that never carried the rose to him. He asked me to send the rose itself, but my eyes did not give colour to him.

My child, I waited for you each day. Though I knew you were never to be found. Your brothers and sisters will walk inside the home you built within me. But not you, my son. 

Our paths never crossed, still we met in the bridge of forbidden. We wanted to embrace, so hard, that we would evolve to each other. But the bridge never linked us and on the shores, we the forbidden souls, built another, through which we let our words flow. In that bridge of grapevines, I saw your words sprouting like little leaves. The leaves, blood red like you. 

The day you left me was not that dawn. It was the night you called me 'mumma'. Inside my sleepy eyes, I saw your little hands, stretched out for mine, and your eyes half opened, searching for me. I was here, all over you, blanketing you like the creator. Still, I was far away. In a distant land, a lonely island, surrounded by the sea of sins, where no bridge was seen. 

I remember, the island was  a grapeyard, blood red grapes fully ripened but never plucked. The winds from the yard, I knew, it smelled of decayed grapevines.