Sometimes

A creaseless shirt, pleated pants, a Windsor knotted tie;
He primps his hair, grabs his keys,
Hurriedly mumbles a few words, waves his family goodbye,
And makes a dash for the door.

‘To-Do’ tasks clog up his mind
As he races through lanes and by lanes;
And later like a prisoner, he to his desk is confined,
While a fourteen inch screen swallows him.

As the needles precisely tick by on the clock,
Mechanical ‘I’m fine’s to disinterested ‘how are you’s,
Deceivingly polite and terribly needless small talk,
And plastic smiles hiding raging storms within are all exchanged, alongside work.

Driving home, amidst rush-hour traffic, he notices something surreal:
A boy on the pavement, undisturbed by all the noise, staring at the star-lit sky;
Puzzled and awfully curious, he screeches to a halt, slinging himself to the steering wheel;
Then slowly and cautiously, he approaches the little boy.

“This is something unusual”, he claims.
Sitting up, the boy kindly responds, “Well sir, it actually isn’t.”
“So it’s fine to sit around and stare – without a purpose or aim?”
“Yes, sir, every once in a while.

“It’s okay to get out of the rut sometimes,
To live life unrushed, uneventful, unpredictable;
It’s okay not to rhyme, or to follow the rhythm,
To just be ordinary sometimes – perhaps even boring.

“Sometimes it’s okay to reveal the truth behind a brave smile,
Or to just silently cry alone.
It’s okay to recline and think of nothing in particular for a while,
Or to lie in the open and gaze at the stars and savour the moonshine.

“It’s okay to slip away from human contact sometimes,
To serenely indulge in some cheesecake or ice-cream,
And lose oneself in a book on drama or romance or crime.
You see, it’s alright to untwine from mundane, humdrum existence sometimes”

“Sometimes”, he acknowledges.

“Sometimes”, the little boy nods.