Fallen flowers and Wilting humans

Fallen flowers and Wilting humans

When the fallen flower asked the old lady,
You look quite old,
May be eighty or something?
How come you live so long?
What makes you this old?

What makes you old?
Is it your eyes sunken,
Or wrinkled face?
Is it that toothless smile,
Or chipped nails?
Are those grey strands to be blamed or culprit are those cracked heels?

What makes you old?
Is it that one extra candle on your birthday cake
Or that passing day, month and year?
Is it the changing calender
or the new date every day?
Is it the passing moonlit night
Or the blaring sunny days?

To which the lady replied,

Its not the sunken eyes that make me old
But the rivers of tears that i shed when my son died
That made me old

not the deep seated wrinkled
but the hardships that i trampled upon

Not the toothless smile
But the nights that i went empty stomach

Not the chipped nails but the soil that I toiled

Not the grey strands but the strands my husband pulled out off my head

Not the cracked heels but the barren roads I traversed in search of few drops of water

Its not the candles but the forgotten birthdays that made me old

Its the tiring days and sleepless night
Months of grief and years of separation that made me old

The blackened nights and forlorn days,
Springs without my lover and glum winters that made me old

Its less of happiness and more of grief that my destiny served me that made me old

Numerous funeral pyres that i saw ablazing
And not one for me that made me old

Ohh flower we mortal beings don't wilt like you with the ending of a season or two

We droop with the time that we wait
for the death to come and take us in its embrace

Till that time we breathe and sweat and toil and traverse
With sunken eyes, wrinkled face and a toothless smile,
Till the time death takes us in its embrace.