Runaway train

I sit here in my familiar room with the familiar smell of unpacked piles of clothes and books. My picture pastiche from a different time stuck jaded on the wall.Old photos with smiling faces and teenage high-school novels peer at me from a corner, drawing me back to the past. The air smells of confinement, yet of freedom.

I used to lock my room a lot while growing up. My mom used to squeal incessantly about why I don't roam in the garden instead, like other kids my age. I don't lock my room anymore. My mom still peeps in curiously, trying to gather as many pieces of me before I leave to London for study.

I give away snatches of thoughts to distinct people in my past who have helped craft me into who I am right now. I remember soft-brown eyes, toothy grins, tendrils of black hair, arched eyebrows, gurgling laughter and soft voices. I remember the words they said, the comfortable silences, plates of food brought-up, the care taken to make a cup of tea and the distant shouts of a thousand animated conversations. I remember wisps of smoke, the cold smell of winter just set-in and the sound of endless babble under the sheets through the night.

I hear the soft, consistent whistle of the train I'm on which plays in the background but does little to shake me from my reverie. It chugs on slowly and deliberately. I look out at the rain-soaked green and melancholic blue of the sky. I press my chin against the wet window rail and stare at the dull-red brick walls. Scene after scene unfold before my eyes, like an utopian world shot in black and white. I cannot tear my eyes away. The train has left the station some time back. And, I'm still looking back.

Freedom says to freedom

I felt a pang for the you in you
But not for the you in the infinite
The shades of colour you painted me
You just needed a paintbrush of a different size for company
They are fragile as a butterfly, yet mighty as a mountain
I saw innocence and warmth and a tender quality of love
And a hint of your past, your present and your future
Carefully measured and contained for the worthiest cause
Carefully poured into the vessel for the noblest of all causes.
Will the vessel slip through your fingers? And, blur the vision you so much adore?
Paint the world with the colour I see and not just coz of me
Empty the vessel to honour your passion and make the cause ring truer for you
I step by you, beside you, just to caress your hair and whisper in your ear
Just a shooting star on your starlit sky
One you can point at and remember
When I said: The you I see in you is the you in the infinite.

Dialogue

Hurtness:

How did you assume I would not understand?
Maybe you didn't understand me or care enough to understand me
But, it's fine-- I forgive you!

How did you assume I wouldn't know how much loving that someone special means to you?
Maybe you didn't think I would, but I do
So, hakuna matata and I forgive you

How did you think I would not know how irreplacable I am?
I would, coz I am good and you know
So, solpa chill madi, it's fine right? I forgive you

How did you think I would assume we value the same things,
You value love more, and friendship is more like me
Hopeless hopes, secret desires, I wish I was like you!
And there's no need to repeat, but I do forgive you.

But what went wrong, I must tell
Not to you, but to myself

What you didn't think about is how hurt I would be to hurt you
What you didn't think about is how bad I would feel to see you frown
What you didn't know was I care more or as much as you do
What you didnt know was for you, I wouldnt mind being the clown

I do pray for you, and I care I do
and on this note, let me forgive myself too!

It really doesn't matter if I'm right or you
as much as you matter, and mater you do

Just in case you thought I didn't, I forgive you!


Desperation:

Me and myself, we hope to become one someday
Don't listen to that which a rainy day may bring
But, with the sun in your heart
For the rain brings with it what the sun did not.
Don't let each truth stop your search for more
I seek to be as endless as you, but I'm not
With each step behind, I run along a lil' ahead
The tears I saw, tear at me too
For I hurt someone as beautiful as you
I write this for you to see me too
How much I yearn for myself to be closer to me
Coz through this, I want to be closer to you.