Midnight's Children

The clock strikes twelve.

The moon is high

The stars all quiet

The wind in a lull

A solemn silence.

A quiet, breathing, perspiring silence.

We.

The ink-like mass morphs into the skin.

The clouds for supple curves

The wind for the voices.

Blinding lights shine through the lashes

The celestials reside in our window-soul.

The heart is fashioned out of fear-

In case we forget where we're from.

The mind sculpted from thunder

kept together by moaning dew.

We are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent.

We.

We see through all the lies-

We were born with them

We see the borders you draw.

We breathe in fumes of blood long lost

We sing in tunes agone.

We stand united, in our strangeness

Evidence of the time

When the clock struck twelve.

August fourteen, nineteen forty-seven.

We remember, do you?

Our fates entwined by the clock's stroke.

We stand aloft, in our strangeness.

Us, the midnight's children.

⚜

On Salman Rushdie's 74th Birthday, here is an ode to 'Midnight's Children', a novella traversing in tendrils of wisteria- though soaked in blood.