Three Cups

Three cups on a table and all behold

The statement “drink me in, just take a sip”

As the thirst crushes my throat and dries

My veins out of life and tampers with my vision.

Three cups on a table and I’m unable to choose.

One will put my thirst to an end and one

Will put my life at stake, it’s that I know

There is always a catch; it can’t be easy.

I stumble and I fall as my eyes flash as a corrupted program

I’m shutting down, as if a machine losing power

My hand hits one of the cups, and it falls to the floor

It breaks and its contents flow

Blood it is, fresh and warm.

I manage to catch the other one in the row

It isn’t water, it isn’t wine

A liquid colorless, tasteless and vague

Just as my life as it scrolls in front of me.

I drink and drink but my throat is still dry

I firm my grip over the cup and I squeeze it tight

I drown myself in the liquid that never satisfies

My thirst, nor my throat, nor my anger, growing.

I come to the last as I tremble and stutter

I raise it to my lips as if a growling animal

I hold it with both hands, I try to drink it and kill my thirst

It’s an empty cup but heavy as a burden.

I fall onto the ground and twist as I’m hurting

In swirls and in circles.

I’m finally set and silent

As someone hurls in to my crying and my sound.

He sees me cut and bleeding, he sees me dead and pleading

He sees the crushed cup of blood

And the one with the nameless drink

He sees the one that’s empty tightened to my grip

As he’s shocked, he tries to loosen my tight

And as the cup is detached from my hand he reads

“Misery” engraved in my palm.

He crawls back in horror, he stands up and runs

He pumps in the walls that meets his path

And that’s how his life went on after seeing me lying dead

And he never tells my story, he never narrates what his eyes beheld.

So here is my story told, here’s mystery getting unfolded

Narrate the story and listen to the sound

Of the changing direction of the wind

It’s “Misery” that I chose as the cup from which I drink

And it’s my curse that has befallen on the person who stayed silent.