Bullets fired from high-powered guns

exceeded the speed of the sound but

the passive ripples of shock waves

wake me in the middle of the night

I keep going back to July ninety-nine

My fellow comrades locked in fierce gunfight

and thunderous roar of bombs

have come alive a thousand times

in these twenty-five years of my life

Each time I try to move on

I wake up at the edge of that mountain height

that was claimed back in nineteen ninety-nine

The long empty stillness in my brain

goes numb and I don’t feel

the ground under my cold feet

With all incurable wounds seated deep within

I curse that night as I think of men lost beneath 

the snow carpet. The memory of bloodshed 

chokes my breath and I get restless 

in my safe confines

The Kargil war is left far behind

But I keep going back to July ninety-nine

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Pragya Bajpai, an alumna of Lucknow University and Banaras Hindu University, is an academic, and a faculty in the Department of English at National Defence Academy, Pune. She has over 500 poems published worldwide. She has edited five books of creative writing to celebrate Armed Forces.