The Answer Question

The body lies trapped in the soul’s snare;
choking it inch by slow inch that merciless sprite
neither lets it die nor does it kill.
Wonder which grudge is it holding upon.
Such a sudden, vicious clutch at the throat
that the body thrashes desperate
praying for the breaths to cease.
The wily soul however, keeps it lassoed
with that final breath.

Eyes forget to blink, staring in terror as
the soul sharpens its claws, deliberate
and malicious on the millstone of time.
It’ll be one of those days again, when
every layer of thought will be scraped raw
plucking and snipping the seams of memories.
May it just rip out and uproot all feeling,
cast them into that smoldering inferno,
forever turned into black ash, never again
ever to be sensed by the body.

Smiling with diabolical coldness instead, the soul
one after the other, meticulously lines up
a glaringly exposed, stark naked parade of
every plucked feeling, every incised memory,
in the sadist flickering of that infernal light.
There’s no respite behind eyelids shut tight
for this graphic tirade brands itself
as a sizzling retinal scar, marked forever
if ever at all it heals, though with every intent
to eternally fester, an oozing wound.

Amidst every grip of its talons, every choke,
every rip of its claws, every frigid smile of its
devilish lips, amidst every thrash,
every scream of the tortured body, the soul
had not uttered a single word
nor made the faintest noise. Nothing
but a cold unwavering maniacal stare at
the Body, slipknotted with that final breath.
At length, in reply to its every question
the Soul simply whispered its own-

          “Now, why should this mirror terrify you so?”