MOM'S OLD NOTEBOOKS

MY MOM'S OLD NOTEBOOKS
I have suddenly found
My mom's old notebooks
And grabbing her words like a hand
I am travelling with her backwards
In her as well as my own past....
As if I've entered  into a hall of mirrors,
Each mirror reflecting a different year,
A different me, a different her,
so far away, yet so very near!...
There's my schoolbus and the road to my school,
There's my lunchbox and that swimming pool
Wherein I got almost drowned amidst anxious giggles,
Only to be saved by her, oh, all those ripples
I still feel in my bones, and that 'blood',
Which she had termed with a smile as my 'first period'....
There are some blank pages, but through them too
I can hear her indrawn breaths, and her pauses,
Her unease,silent sighs or plain boredom,
A low whispered,'Oh,come what may come.'
Then in some entries I see myself
In her place, clad in her words,
No more just moulded in her image
But her herself!
And then in some entries she seems, oh ,so different!
Almost like a stranger and alienlike distant!
And some entries carry a mute hidden warning,
"Halt here!No further trespassing!"
Even then I move on stealthily and anxiously,
Just like in the childhood in the dark night
I would suddenly wake up and out of fright
Would sleepwalk to her bed and enter into her quilt
Embrace her and blush with a sense of guilt,
When my hand would touch her naked breasts,
Whose plumpness would cast a strange spell,
With their warmth  and musky milky smell!....
Shivering a little with those memories I move on
Only to find some pages have been roughly torn,
Shocked a little,I wonder, what does this mean,
Oh, how that gap seems like her shrivelled skin
Where her right breast was but a few days ago,
Just then she comes from behind and whispers 'Let go'....
.........
PORTIA