[[elegy Of A Ventilator]]* Poem by Rehan Hyder

Led eyes to the shades of spring
In the hues of autumn
Taught such geometry to chin
that my eyes never rolled wantonly
marriage was the name of ventilator
loaded with 18 years of candles and cakes;
she tugged merrily
Conversation situated inside a scrabble
Ranged on electrical outages to
Stock trades
She and her ventilator
lived their waist-down
lives in a bubble
where “e” could never equal “mc2”
And gravity remained less then “9.8 m/s2”
Her oestradiol helped keep
Twitch of his right brow alive; over 18 years
she lived rest of his body

2 months back the ventilator
Became breathless and stopped
I saw cake, candles, and elegiac alphabets
All over her-

* Dedicated to the inimitable love story of Zia and Anwer. At a tender age of 22 Zia had to takeover Anwer’s business who was paralyzed; save a twitch of brow, in a car accident. A petit urban doll unaware of the harsh ways of the world she was hell-bent on keeping the ventilator alive. They had a very tiring communication line. She would read a-z and strenuously formed sentences; thus the scrabble. Anwer passed away in July 2008.