…And so, we continued to stay here.
Out the front-window, first storey of a rare-house.
Separated rays, along with dust that’s still in the air,
caused a familiar flinch in my gaze.
The colony across the road stretched out into the horizon,
every house was built in succession
with some space left unbuilt on either sides as per the mandate---
making a chamber of sorts, with houses being the outer walls.
On summer evenings in particular,
I would set-up my chair on the balcony
and gaze into this chamber I’d conceived of.
Eyes brimming with bleakness and misery
that’d come back from a full-day of work.
A long time ago, a butterfly flew by the balcony,
into these walls;
It flew into the veranda of the first house—
then the next two,
and never rose for the fourth.
I began writing that evening
about this distant-encounter.
There was little to do in the empty-hours,
away from work.
I’d come a long way since being an outcast.
Regardless of whatever brings you joy,
all dreams must shatter—
as a greater plan surfaces from obscurity,
inconceivable a second ago, for the child.
“How much is the death of an insect worth;
how many of them ventured into those walls
behind my sight?”
I asked out loud, as my voice reached out,
to an indifferent choir.
The Sun grazed at the horizon
for as long as I remained on my balcony.
As I wrote in fervor
I started to look behind,
for the first time in years.
“Life can alter more than-three times.”
I’d been on a path to stardom until
I had a flinch of doubt.
"What comes rushing, is what’s lost.”
The next moment, I was lining for a job,
any job,
In my teens, I bid a permanent farewell
to my parents, and my childhood home.
I ventured on my own,
seeking a way at life that I hadn’t been told.
There was the error!
I should’ve stayed back,
get a degree, and work for a better paycheck.
Perhaps that in the end
was the error that put me in this cell by myself.
I’d even leased a part of myself.
“Through depths you shall prosper
beyond land, and grant me a sight of the sky—
from within the depths, where I reside.”
Was an easy claim to make, hard to live-by.