If one were to wipe me from your memory, you would still be you, and I would still be me walking the same paths, crossing the same crossroads, eyes on the sun, hearts aflutter, searching for a glimpse: one for the brown hand, and one for the white, one for the long days, and one for the night.
I wish I could close the world, draw each corner of it unto me like a blanket, like falling asleep at the center of petals and let the silence mould me into something beautiful, something lost, something forgotten, so that when I am found in the middle of nowhere, a child unable to understand the depths of the finger he holds to walk I am appreciated, welcomed home, and not left like a wrapper on the road.
I feel the feathers in my bones, and eddies in my soul, as my mind flows passing through life, through gentle retributions, via murmured aspirations like wave after wave, conquering and crashing, a second of victory, only to dissolve, and dance on the auburn sand between time’s pink toes, walking on eternity’s shore, barefoot.
Half the time, I just exist—like husks of wheat. I move along with the wind, without a thought, a care, or ambition. I do what I have been told. I pray, I preach, I learn, and I teach. I exist for the benefit of others, like a common condiment.
The thing is—I could be much more. Much, much more. Like saffron or vanilla.
But there is a sadness inside me that pulls me close, a sadness that makes melancholia look adorable—romantic in ways that rejoices my being. I wonder if there are pieces of plastic latched to my soul, making me incomplete.
Outside my window, the rain speaks. I hear the conversation between the trees, the pathway, the creaking seesaw, the blades of grass, and the drowning ants.
Should I, too, put in a word about my world?About how I have surrendered to my surroundings? How my ego has mounted a paper boat and is now heading towards the eternal eddies of societal suicide?
There is a knock.
The floor feels soft without my slippers. Numb feet makes quite a carpet. The latch has brown patches on it—rust, spread out like a map of Europe.
I remember first hearing about Turkish Delight in Narnia—how the girl opens the door of a cupboard and is transported to a land of enchantment. Well, mine takes me face-to-face with a plethora of files: red, blue, and green.
I wish I were colourblind.
But that thought is for another time. Presently, I am enamoured with my own incompetence. The door closes and the stench of garbage wafts in, with a peculiar rhythm to it—an echoing arrhythmia. It takes me four rapid blinks to come to terms with the fact that it is indeed my heart, fluttering like a stapled butterfly.
God is muted silence. For silence can be heard. But God? He cannot be. He has left the pastures to the wolves, and the forests to the sheep.
Rejoice, children! (I dared to laugh)
Is this not what every heart desires in the end? To change? To be something other than what one is born with?
Yes—the first act of violence that any man commits is against himself.
First, he desires to shed. Next, he desires to show. And finally, he desires to be sold.
We are slaves, one and all—slaves to life and love, to vision and division, to season and decision, to thought, to carelessness, to songs, to books, to faces, to sex, to laughter, to text, to limelight, to corners, to whiskey, to cigarettes, to auguries, to cabarets, to sugar, to fantasies, to all things other than reality—
Far too long ago, I stood on a bridge, In crowded solitude, Counting stardust; those city lights, Ignorant that it belonged, Each for a man and his dream, Limping endlessly, by alleys, Of censored minds.
Far too long ago,