Sunday Reflection – Pradipta Dey

 The Tulips in White

“My heart is yours
It’s you that I hold on to
That’s what I do
And I know I was wrong
But I won’t let you down
(Oh yeah, yeah, yes I will)”

 My child cries over the bellows of the horizon. This time, they took it all. This time, palettes of brown and  dirt lay askew in front of my eyes, in front of the grains that fell with each ricochet of each pellet. Innards spilled, muddled with gurgles of voices coming from a few metres away. The naked bricks bombarded into twos and threes and fours. Oh, what a waste! What a waste of this soft world.  And he, he knelt there, hands by his side, not holding anything, just soullessly pointing downwards. Jaws unhinged, there was hell surrounding him. My hands were swiped over his cheeks, feeling the coarse texture of the  minute hair sticking out, passing over my numb skin. Crimson paint is smeared over his hollow.
I betrayed him, didn’t I? Of course, I did.
They took my son. They took me. And there lay a warfield. My tulips will grow at last.

Days pass by. I know now. I saw sparks. I saw sparks and now I am stuck on a wall. I saw sparks, yellow embers flowing away into airs of subdued happiness and he remembers me as his most precious thought come true. I hold his autumn leaves that don’t flow away with heavy breaths and wet eyes. In me, he sees himself, his mother, his father and his sisters. In me, he sees that redemption which he can steal with little glances when nobody is looking at him. I hold his ink, his letters to the dead, the dried pages from the books he cherishes the most. I hold words and people which made him a new man. I am his unspoken song, lingering around the corners of his lopsided simper when he fixes his tired gaze on me. It took not more than an hour of work, yet infinite hope for days, or so I would like to think.
He believes in things coming back to him in the end, if not always in the ways you expect it to. He likes to stare at me, for days in unison. My yellow in the night. To me, the skies still speak of blue. He calls me his bloodied tulip. I know I am more. He knows too, but he is afraid of memories sometimes.
He is calling me, I should go. The valleys are not red yet. The fireflies are about to come.

“And I saw sparks
Yeah I saw sparks
And I saw sparks
Yeah I saw sparks
Sing it out”

Credits: Lyrics taken from the song Sparks, ColdPlay, 2000.
Written by Chris Martin and ColdPlay.