He was a tad more than six,
an innocent lad who sold icicles,
as he desperately tried to fix
life’s acerbity, their abject poverty—
freedom from fate’s fiendish jinx.
He only had his mother,
both her legs amputated
due to a gangrene she did suffer—
helpless in a wheelchair, under her blood’s care,
the pair sustaining each other.
Alas! The boy had no clue!
For barely was there rice for one
‘a weeping mother brewing a stew’—
and she lovingly, yet agonizingly
fed her share to her son too.
Business was at a standstill;
the icicles refused to be sold.
but one day towards town downhill
he saw a baby, of age three maybe,
beckoning to him from behind the grill.
“Icicle! Icicle!” danced it merrily
as the boy handed him one.
e overjoyed baby carelessly
gave its mother’s purse to the boy at once,
yet he left it there reluctantly.
‘Be honest and happy will you roam.’
He remembered mother’s teachings
on his way home—
a tin shanty, dingy and runty,
abjection’s ominous epitome.
Life is the allegorical Devil
as on returning he discerned
his mother; cold and still
on the bed, woe she was dead!
Due to excruciating hunger she didn’t fulfill.
“Why?!” the boy asked Him
repeatedly, crying fervently;
“Why did she succumb to Death’s abysm?”
God remained silent and annoyingly adamant
while the boy wept on his mother’s scrim.
The morning rays shone light on
sinister thoughts in a troubled mind—
‘a little boy’s mutiny against God’s abduction.’
He poised himself and found on the shelf,
his mother’s vial of lethal poison.
The baby greeted the boy gaily
when it saw two icicles in his hands.
“Choose one,” smiled he genially.
One toxified, the other dulcified—
both sucked on their icicles happily.
This was originally published in the Spring 2018 edition of The Helix.
