Written by Ayush Banerjee
I wish
my eyes could capture
faces that my mind often forgets.
Unable to embrace them,
the heart regrets,
moments that slowly wither in my mind,
(a hasty yet silent crumble).
Birds, their robust feathers,
solemnly crusading against the gruesome weather,
those that used to find solace in the shelter of the tress,
(the branches of which could no longer hold on
to his leaves,
was born out of stretch marks
and unspoken battles of his own
could no longer comfort the weary feathers);
their merry chirps until a reluctant return before nightfall
was a song, in disguise of a saviour,
to the despised appearance of the tree.
Their flight back to the nest
reminds me of every evening
when my disinterested footstep
and my detached spring
would find their way to my mother’s face,
awaiting my presence in her otherwise lonely haven.
Ghastly bushes and the evening sky
that travel with every fading second,
along with the car’s speeding window
(ah! if only my mind
could let loose
of the memories that too can fly).
The cigarette smoke
paves way for its own escape
through minor and major holes of time.
The eyes lost in the descending subway stairs
as every foot tries to rush against ticking clock,
words, moments and faces,
they’d overlap
like every nervous sip from coffee
gone cold, yet the after-taste lingers fine.
Meshes of a subway rush-
the heart beats faster
and my mind only knows of the escape;
my feet ascend along with the stairs,
a weary battle against time
and I wish the daily run
would’ve been easier;
hazy lights as they pass by
like streaks of memories,
rekindled in the mind.
Every lighting candle burns
for a longing presence in the darker hallways,
every drop of wax shed
to form into smoke
that is born only to rise and blend in with the air.
The smoke has hardly felt the blemishes of time,
a bottle of an old wine
has heard the whispers of emptiness
that time itself has fed.
My eyes,
endlessly searching for hope
in every light,
like puddles across the street
trying to embrace the moonlight,
eyes, fearlessly open wide
noticing minute moments of chaos
ascending into a sudden pause of midnight.
My innocent eyes, bewildered,
by the bitter-sweet melancholy of life,
coated in layers
of past betrayals, present growth
and a reassuring future,
have been a part of mankind’s greatest tragedy,
for every eye is cursed with loneliness
and the cure to which lies beyond
the other side of a boundary:
walls made of flesh, bones and lies,
eyes caged in sockets,
unaware of each other’s existence.
