There are certain moments
for which we would gladly spend whole lifetimes waiting
in the reserve bench
and in the right wing defense;
say, to see our mothers punch their wrinkled fists
into the stadium’s vacant air
like men do,
to hear them scream to our wonderment
and shout vulgar obscenity
we never thought that they were capable of
after we score our first goals for the club
towards the end of our careers
from a free kick the wall wasn’t strong enough to block.
Likewise there are certain moments
which we would never want to live.
We would gladly spend whole lifetimes just to escape them;
say, many years after our careers ended
and many years after all the obscenity ceased
straightening out all those wrinkles,
on one hot night in the prison
under the yellow electric bulb
we struggle to have just one breath of air
as the volumes that we take
gets lost sucked into nowhere
as if our lungs have nothing but pores in them,
as if all the air around wouldn’t
satisfy our lust for a lungful of breath,
as we suffocate amidst the amusement
of our fellow prisoners standing against the thick wall,
as we price a little air far more
than even the sacred memory of our mother’s gold ring
which we pawned long back,
as we crouch and writhe in the floor
fighting hard for air
with our breaths becoming deeper and deeper
and again and again feeling every ounce of it spilling
somewhere within our thankless body,
as we wheeze to death
a sad thought,
perhaps the last of its kind,
flashes through our mind -
“all our years in reserve benches
and all our moments as the right wingback
should have been spent to defend this agony,
this killing greed for air”.
