I feel everything turning too dark and too bright,
All at once.
Do you ever feel the same?
All the worries and doubts of your mind,
Rising up in the air like the smoke coming out of chimneys, making everything that surrounds us so very opaque?
And then have you ever inhaled your losses and buried your desires for something or the other.
To make it all stop?
Do you feel trapped in the smoke?
And do you feel it?
Hot fumes touching your bare skin,
Burning the corners of your heart?
And have you ever felt like it’s just you,
All along,
Inhaling the smoke bit by bit, breathless and coughing?
Smoke; coming out from the chimney of your mind,
Everything in your head collapsing one after another,
All the bridges you had once decided to cross with people who never meant to cross them with you?
Do you feel trapped?
Would you rather die?
Or would you live till the smoke and fumes that keep hurting you settle down and would you then look at your bruised body
With empathy and love?
Would you wait till another moment kills this one?
And would you then rise above, carrying your aches,
Float if you may,
In the air
And will you let the wind take you in its arms?
Can you live through it all because it is going to pass
And I know that you will see every hope once the sky is clear.
So shall we wait till the moment of pain dies and you live?
May I hold your hand and count on you to believe these truths?
Days will be brighter and the nights will be calmer
And you will rise above the difficult days like the smoke coming through the chimney.
Your mind is home to all kinds of thoughts that pass by.
Be a good host till it’s time for them to leave,
But do cease the moments of plain joy you will feel
Of existing in this world.
So let us rise above like smoke
And all the difficulties will disappear
Or will turn
Into ashes.
About the author: Zeal has recently finished her Masters in English Language Teaching(ELT) and has been working at an NGO since. She is trained in Kathak for over seven years and holds Visharad in it. She enjoys reading modernist poetry and prose more than anything.