She walked to the edge.
The cliff lay parched under her feet.
The sand beneath her feet burning,
As if to exact some distant primitive revenge.
Fierce, vicious, violent.
The thorns bathed in venom bore into her flesh.
Pebbles burnt black,
Giving off soot like a sinewy skeleton .
The lust in the thirsty wind streaked her troubled tresses. 
Carrying embers of doom in their unrelenting ire.
Under the hot afternoon sun,
Her heart hardened and died.
“You are a girl.” They said.
And she was just a girl.


The squalid waters flowed under her,
Cutting through the base.
The tentacles of glass barriers,
Spreading placidity all around itself.
Her eyes looked tired of saline tears
Drying in a screaming  silence.
A tell-tale lull prevailed.
The minutes wet with easing pain,
Waited for time to clot into a meaningless void.
And through the pores of cerulean skies,
She heard whispered curses.
“You are a burden.” They said.
And she was just a burden.


She looked down into the depths,
Where there was no dearth of dark.
Where still hissing magma of hatred dwelled
In endless reservoirs of unclad vice.
No one breathed.
Nothing moved.
Only a seductive gorge of envy gaped back at her.
From here it was a steep climb up to find the sun....
And some wafts of moist clouds, she thought.
Like rain in starved June,
Like kisses wrapped in soft delight
Like unuttered promises of love.......she hoped.
But, that was not her.
In some other time.
At some other place.

As if waiting for the inevitable
While tongues, lecherous with pallid drool reached out to her bosom
A pair of red unforgiving eyes swooped down on her
She gave in.
- A deep, lonely plunge.
From far away she could hear them shout,
“You are a whore.”
And she was a whore.





**  This poem was Swati's  idea. She owns the intellectual property rights and the mood of the poem.

**  I collaborated with her and scribbled few lines. And I am posting this on my blog owing to the combined efforts of her computer in effective & prolonged malfunctioning......and also her reluctance in show-casing her literary skills of late.