Lost
Discover more from It All Burned and Was Light
I could be lost
in a village somewhere,
in the dark moist streets
lined with brick houses and sundry shops,
the crickets chirping
by the side of pools of mud and dark water,
the washed-up moon
glistening like someone’s bloated face.
I set my bike on stand
and decide to buy a cigarette
from the cluster of shops near a railway line.
They inquire my name
and ask if I am new around here,
but I smile
and let the question linger a while
like the plumes rising in the air.
‘I could be lost,’ I say —
‘but, don’t worry.’
Once I got lost when I was five.
I was visiting a relative’s place,
and they gave me a big coin,
and I wanted to spend it on icecream,
and maybe I got far,
or took too many turns,
but just seconds into
slurping the melting candy,
the ecstasy turned to panic
as I realized I didn’t know
how to get back where I came from.
For a few minutes
the world with its
blue boundaries and black shadows of people
caved on me,
buried me under,
and tears welled up in my eyes,
till a girl at the house I was visiting
who followed me on my way
reached and rescued me.
I wish I remembered that angel’s face. But alas.
That is one terrifying memory.
There are other ways
to lose oneself as well—
I could be lost
in a dream
which came to pass
and broke with the sun’s first rays,
leaving in its wake a fuzzy feeling
that it was a good dream
and I wanted it to last,
and I sometimes think about it
though I don’t remember much of it.
I could be lost in time
(more like stuck in time)
with no way to get back or go forward (?)
‘cause I am trapped like a bug in amber1
to this exact Present
and often I don’t like anything.
And I don’t have a quarrel with time,
I honestly just wish to
put my hand on something
and feel it passing.
Like something slips through
your fingers
and even if you can’t stop it from slipping
you can at least feel it
as it is leaving your hold.
So when weeks and days
pass in haze,
I want
a receipt of sorts.
As we sit gazing,
we hear the roar of an engine,
a train rustles past us
like a caterpillar made of lights
and we watch it like children,
stupefied.
“Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?” — a quote from ‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut.