The city of long shadows in obscure streets,
The city of one cursed home with a sad tune,
Chains of beasts whom ever she meets!Desires that are drafted in day, move away.
And those dreams are gone in the dark.
Exhausted of sadness, leaving the day
Through the streets filled with beast and shark.
An inhuman pungent odor repulses the air.
All and every sounds are marveling to ears.
To carry on the shoulders a woe and dare;
The big moon in the city of lights appears.
Drunks go by dry, men sigh from torture;
And to carry again a load in the cursed home
*
In that hot September evening, once more Anna saw her cousin, Fro and his family in London. Now they had two sons. Should she know that this visit would be the last and she would never see him again, perhaps she would forget the pain of losing her brother and enjoy the visit more. Her rainy eyes did not clear until she was back in Washington and in her apartment.
There was a combination of pain and mental image in her words when she described over and over what happened to Aria to her cousin and his wife. It was like a morbid tensity that shocked everyone including herself. She seemed dangerously disturbed at that moment; nonetheless, the next moment she was exhilarating. When she left the next day, Fro told his wife that he was extremely worried for Anna'a well being; but he undermined Anna's vigorous power and energy for survival!
When Anna enter her empty apartment on that hot evening, she sought the traces of past; she wanted to forget but learn from them. The place was filled with ghosts, the ghosts she wanted to run them away, but she could not. She was exhausted of the long journey and months of agony; yet she wanted to be alert and awake to think and remember. Why was she there in that city of beasts, in that coursed home? Where was the one, who with persistence had taught her courage? What did happen to his own courage? Why were people governed by their feelings more than their wisdom? And they were all these whys that perplexed her to walk like a ghost among the ghosts.
She could see Aria sitting on his favorite chair, Marianna walking with her robe, and her father getting out of the shower. They were all gone. One had joined eternity, the other had left her for an abusive and user man, and her father had gone to wither with anguish. There she could see the past and present interwove and glued together and she could not separate them. She walked in the empty apartment, trying to hear the march of time; but she was deaf then. Nothing could be heard except a melancholy tune of beasts. How could she endure easily a thing so monstrous? She was alone; she was left alone; she felt empty.
*
Hoping for a miracle, Anna kept delaying her promise to Joseph. She was torn between doing what he wanted her to do and an imaginary hope. "What if I inject the poisonous drug into his vein and end his life and they discover a cure for that deadly cancer tomorrow?" She thought. She was like a mad woman in that house, a prisoner of her feelings and thoughts. She was there day after day and except for occasional leaving home to buy grocery or to go to drug store, she never left Joseph's side. Their friends criticized her for not admitting him into a hospital or a nursing home. Who were them to judge her or tell her what to do? What did they know about pain, agony? Why didn't they live their own lives? Nevertheless, she left one thing alive and intact in that home, her vision. She would lie next to Joseph and travel to past. No one could criticized her for loving her husband. She was the sole owner of her life, past, and imagination.
*
To Be Continued
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