Chasing Sunshine

Where the road forked in two

There stood a tree,

Pretty huge,

Pretty majestic;

Rendering shade

On either side,

The sunrays barely filtering

Through its dense foliage.

When the day came

For it to be felled,

For that day did come,

Although it bothered some,

A smattering of random folks

Who journeyed on those roads;

And so on that day,

They came to say,

A solemn goodbye;

And then they each

Went on their way,

For such is life.

You may give your time,

Your wealth, heart, soul and mind,

And yet be deprived

Of what matters most,

Someone who’ll stay,

By your lonely, fallen self,

Not just before,

But also, long after the axe

Was plunged through your side

To send you crashing down.

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I

There was a time

When you were naive,

When they had you believe,

In the power of their love,

And the safety in belonging.

There was a time,

When you fell for their deceit,

Never quite knowing,

Or indeed, having known,

What it really feels

To be loved as one’s own,

Sans conditions.

There was a time,

When you stood alone –

Absolutely so,

A bit bewildered,

Head hanging in shame,

And very frightened;

You dared not cry out loud,

But you thought,

They’d come anyway

To stand by you,

To take you away

From the battlefield.

And you waited,

For that day

When they would –

But the only fool

In that waiting game,

Was you –

The battered you,

The windswept, broken you,

Now rebirthed into a new dawn

Of realization.

II

Love does not touch

Every life,

Just the same;

Some are ensconced within it,

And some deprived,

Perchance because

They are not good enough,

For such precious things

As boundless love.

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There is a little bit of you

That you lost along the way,

It happened one fine day,

And at the time,

Although it hurt

For a while,

There were other things

To tend to,

Other things crowding your mind;

So you stuffed the pain

In a dark corner,

And moved on,

Until the day,

When you lost yet another

Tiny bit of yourself;

You bowed your head

In shame, yet again;

Yet, moving on,

Was the name of the game,

It always was.

Until now –

When you pause,

To take stock,

And you realize

Just how much you’ve lost

Of yourself;

And how gaping

The wound is.

As for the shame,

You wonder if you’ll ever feel the same

As that day long ago,

Just before

You lost a bit of yourself,

For the very first time.

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You are not special –

You’ve always wanted to be,

You even thought you were

For a while;

And then slowly,

You started to realize,

That you are not.

Nobody cares about

What matters to you,

They couldn’t care two hoots,

Whether you choose

Pink over blue,

Or mundane over footloose;

And for a while,

It bothered you,

That nobody really cared,

Beyond wanting to

Control which paths you took.

But as you grow older,

You resist, become bolder,

And break free –

Of the shackles they employed to rein you in,

And quietly, you slip away,

Like the last light of the fading day,

Into a realm of your own.

For you aren’t special, you’re unknown,

Far too common to stand out,

And you will not be missed,

As you step into the bliss

Of the freedom you have won.

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The pieces of your life,

That you now hold

In the cup of your hands,

Are but fragments

Of a whole;

For you are broken,

In ways that you could not

Have ever imagined,

It is only now,

That you have started to discover,

The when, and the how,

Of your brokenness.

You bend low

To pick up the shards,

Hurting yourself in the process,

But you are too numb to notice;

Instead,

You marvel at your ability

To hold pieces of yourself,

While you are disintegrating.

And just like that,

You begin to believe,

That in being broken,

You might just heal

And build your whole,

One fragment at a time.

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A moment –

That was all it took

To change my outlook;

Or perhaps it was more than that,

Perhaps,

It was a lifetime,

And in traversing through mine,

I find myself gaining distance,

Moving farther every instant,

From everything that I have known

To be true.

Maybe it wasn’t you,

Maybe it was me,

Maybe it was a false belief

Planted as a tiny seed

In the depths of my troubled mind,

In a moment

So utterly transient,

And yet so momentous –

For it changed everything.

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The answers

To the questions that haunt you,

Lie in the past.

Every secret

That is yet to be revealed,

Has its origin

In a moment,

That has come and gone.

You look ahead,

Placing your steps

Into the morrow

That shines with promise,

Hoping you’ll find bliss,

And an absence of sorrow

To cast a shadow

Over your progress.

And yet,

There is no surety

In the imaginary,

For that is the essence

Of the future –

It does not exist,

Except as an uncertain promise.

What has existed

Is the past,

Holding within each moment,

The recollection

Of an emotion,

Yours to fetch at will,

If you please.

Meanwhile, each moment in the present

That you step into,

Is already on its way

To yesterday.

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I

You spend your early years

Learning to draw faces

That show how it looks,

You grow up to seek it in self-help books,

Heck, even a movie’s been made on it!

And yet it remains,

A special topic,

Arousing wonder –

For how indeed,

Do you find happiness?

And more importantly,

Hold on to it

For the rest of ever after?

II

You looked for the happy faces

From the faded pages

Of your kindergarten sketch book,

In every cranny, and every nook;

And although you found

What you sought,

Their happy smiles

Were not on your account.

III

So you had to move on

To keep looking,

And slowly, very slowly indeed,

You had an awakening,

Much like the sunrise,

When you realised,

That the happy face

From the faded page,

Was meant to be you.

IV

You get to choose,

What will make you smile –

Whether it is walking a mile,

Or resting a while

Under the bright blue sky;

Your pursuit

Is now complete,

For you’ve found the key

To enduring happiness.

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The path is almost never straight

It twists, turns and meanders

Through thorny bushland

And lush green pastures;

It takes you for a ride,

Quite literally.

And sometimes,

You lose your touch with reality,

You think you might be losing your mind,

In navigating

The course of this journey.

They say,

Where there is a will,

There is a way;

And therefore,

Since there is a way,

There must be

A bounty,

That it leads to,

Or not –

How does one find out?

By staying on the path, of course.

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I

Words are special –

I’ve always loved how they feel,

At the tip of my tongue,

Or as they course through the pages,

Of a touching novel,

For I love the stories they tell,

As a child,

Those stories were the fuel to ignite

My imaginative mind,

Those stories kept me awake at nights

Sometimes reading,

And at others, musing and exploring.

II

As time has flown on,

My love for words

Has outgrown

The confines of passivity,

That comes from reading,

Reflecting, and even exploring

The worlds I’ve read of,

In manifold stories.

No, my love has evolved –

It now roars,

With the flame of passion,

As it soars

Into oblivion,

And fetches words,

Strung together with the purpose

Of telling stories.

And so I’ve moved on,

From being lulled to sleep

By the warmth of a story,

To being awake at night,

By the faint light

Of the nightlamp,

Birthing a story,

My own story –

For I too, have one to tell.

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