The Twenty-Fourth Hour
Time in this cave passes in surprise—
it modulates, when a daring step is taken, or when a petty-duel begins.
Some people would go for the Sea, “it’s not too far away from here” they'd say.
“Why don’t you, too, undulate time?” I was asked.
The cave had people from places all over—now residents of this arid land by the seaside.
Most would venture into grasslands nearby, for food
when the mist lit up—as did sky, at day.
The Sun was never truly seen, besides in fables about ‘Sunny Beach’.
I never went with the packs, I was asked over three-separate times.
The people here hadn’t much to offer in terms of perspectives of substance;
the cave, too alas, had started to feel like home.
There was a call that I was on the lookout for—
I filed a complaint in every town I stopped before walking by this cave.
These people invited me in, I asked them for any cues they might’ve had;
they shrugged it off, and ogled me with breathless-smiles.
I was dazed, and when they asked me to stay, I couldn’t raise my voice—
I’d abandoned the call.
Last evening, I witnessed a quarrel within the two factions that were.
I wondered, from stories they’d told, of what modulation must’ve occurred,
and about altered time.
Today, another pack was heading for the Sea in search of sunlight; I was asked again.
But I refused; this time the banter stopped—
I was looked at, with the same ogling eyes,
their teeth grunted, mugs were smashed.
At last, I was sent with the pack.
The path ended a few minutes out of the grassland,
“We’d be there by evening.” a man in the front said.
His face read otherwise, the right way was anyone’s best guess.
The mist pertained into the lush forests.
We started to walk in-line; I fared last. The ones in the front would bump
into the trees that came forth, or when some animal cooed from right behind.
I might as well have closed my eyes, and deafened my ears,
as I walked my averted self from the trail, and beastly cries, with curses and sighs.
By dusk at last, the woods were past us.
After long it was that I could see in the distance, as the Sun set;
I deemed the past few months as spent in constant unrest.
The pack disbanded “for until a few days, before we all gather back here again.”
Everyone chose a path to the Sea—
those in front went from clearer trails in the Eastern hills,
and the rest formed a group to walk straight at the forest’s command.
I took the fast-route, and towards the nearest lights I saw.
I walked past farms of seasonal crops, and people of a different race—
I'd entered the village as the night bordered close.
They kept with their packs, with smiles spreading across cheeks.
I tried to forge a smile to fit in, and nodded as they looked my way.
The village was much like my own; a fort left for the poor and elderly to hold.
I thought as I walked: if I could find a place, if I pleaded, and begged a certain way—
to rest defeated, with my guile-self; but at last in an untaint home, and even if so,
on my own.
“A spark that isn’t caught, rests in the blindspot, behind the steps.
It ceases to be, and so does the instinct that swayed the gaze—
a cover for one’s own sparse depth.”
I walked away.
The night had fallen, and as I walked by the final lamp on the last farm—
the village was past.
Winds in the lower plains often ran in might, I'd heard.
The grass rustled, and the leaves of what seldom trees I walked by.
And as I more felt sand on my feet, and the same wistful call, I knew—
I was the first one to reach the Sea.
There was a sand clearing, to the extent of the waves’ influence.
I wore-off my coat, and gazed into the night sky after a long time.
It was some ritual, fulfilled without consent, yet of no bother to my foul-self.
I cared to look for the call here on the desolate ‘Sunny Beach’,
“a person, abstained, veiled in scarf. Not from the cave, the village, or back home.”
“ah..”
I’d been served some awful joke—
The call I was in seek of, a person, refused the right of the empty slate,
made to wear a-lifelong facade.
The Sun was a night’s rest away, but my purpose had come to collapse.
The linger would’ve come to rest; only to be succeeded by arrival of a separate
bad faith.
I started to walk again, along Sunny Beach at night, with little light feeding my sight.
I missed this call, much like the last—
the spark fleeted, behind my steps,
nulled by the Sea—mourning in turmoil, since long ago, for time and beyond—
“the ones of concern pertain, those who vanish are of mourning, the less-promising race.”