Dreaming Through The Decades

It is 1996
And my first breath makes me cry
I reach out, empty fists reaching to clench
The hem of this world
But all there is, is a sudden, alien emptiness  
Guilt flows as I find
Those warm walls 
The nest of my nescience 
Dissolved, collapsed to nature’s cruel balance
Or were it my kicks that brought down
My Rome on me

It is 2007
And I am eleven
And alone
Watching a new world from old eyes 
Somewhere back home my mother is crying
Watching my clothes, neatly folded, at the bottom shelf of the almirah
But those tears won’t teach me 
That love won’t reach me
Here, in my bunk bed covered with mosquito net
My voice has settled deep in my gullet 
Like a sharp flint
So I keep quiet 
For seven years
In dust, duty and delusion 
In camouflage, country and confusion 

It is 2023
And I am watching through the half open door
My sun, up close, 
She is waiting with my world in her lap,
And I wonder if she is a dream
And would dissolve too on my rebirth
For my life, all tragic,
I had lived out in sin
But her touch was magic
A symphony on my skin
And I was afraid to hold her
Afraid too to let her go
She was all I had never known
She was all I would ever know
My last bastion 
My clarion call
My swan song
My Eden’s fall