Hush

The soft and swift and reassuring wind,
The noiseless rustling of the leaves,
Can you hear the gentle patter of the rain,
The crunching of grass on a September's eve?

The mountain, roaring with a fierce might,
The waterfall gushing with haste,
Can you hear the guppies swimming through?
So many million sounds interlaced.

The shiny corn, sprouting up,
Silky and beautiful and new,
Can you see the pumpkin patch, so bright?
The endless colours and sights, so wonderfully subdued.

The pebbled path, leading through
The forest, grim and gray,
Can you see the top, the canopy,
Where the trees seem to sway?

The slow, light sound of your own breathing,
Of your laughter, tears and misery,
Can you hear the beating of your own heart,
Of your soul - everlasting, yet so temporary?

Time Turner

Looking back
I wonder now
Could things have been different?
And I wonder how.

There's so much that
I would like to erase
Things that I did
Just in case.

Why was I
So scared to do
Things that I wanted,
Things that were true?

Why did I do
All those things
Things that I shouldn't have,
Things that I did.

But now it's too late,
We're leaving so soon
Never coming back
To this very room.

If I had a time turner
I would go back,
Undo the mistakes,
Put my wrongs in the sack.

If I had a time turner
I would change
Everything that happened
When things went out of range.

If I had a time turner.

But then I see
These memories are mine
I shouldn't want to erase them
In the future, anytime.

Maybe, if I had a time turner
I would go back
And replay the past,
Do everything I did first.

A memory is a memory,
There's no way to change,
We should be happy
Even when things go out of range.

The Memory

It was like time was suddenly standing still. The light breeze that had rippled through her hair just seconds ago vanished. Not a soul was in sight. The salty smell of the sea persisted, saturating the air. But her mind was elsewhere, in a different time, a different place, where she had been a different girl. The surroundings, however, were starkly similar.

She was lost. She let the memory consume every part of her, every molecule of her body. When she breathed, it was no longer just the salty smell of the ocean, but that intermingled with so many other wonderful aromas. When she listened, there was soft, melodious music. Dancing. Joy.

Suddenly, something flickered. The light went out and she could no longer see anything. She groped through the air, as if trying to catch something. The memory was leaving her, and fast - the happiness and laughter fading away. She gasped as she tried to hold on to it, but thread by thread, it disappeared, until she could see the last wisps of it fading into the deep ocean waters; until she realised that it was just that - a memory.

A Dream found,
Eagerly unwrapped
With a passionate vigour.
New hopes
Seep the horizon
Saturating the air around.
Intense
Determination
Drives away clouds of doubt;
Of discomfort;
Of old, impossible,
Lost hopes.

Somehow,
Somewhen,
Somewhere,
The Dream shattered,
Hopes, crushed.
All that is left:
Longing and despair.
Life becomes
An empty shadow,
Shallow and meaningless.

Trapped

The complications of a single clinging emotion; the fear of Death; the abstractness of a world that seems but cannot be. We spend a lifetime breaking things down, making life simple, only to create a complicated little mess of muddled feelings, of lingering thoughts. Of dissatisfaction; of the complete opposite of simple. For simplicity is what this world lacks. What we call 'mundane' is in fact a complicated cluster of abstractness called life. We seem to be in love with the complexities put forward to us. We claim to try to simplify life, but we simply fail. Miserably. So we exist, with no peace of mind, with thoughts and feelings and emotions that weigh us down to this worldly world. And then, we are trapped. Deprived of any trace of freedom that might have once existed within us.

'Life'? Yeah, right.

I guess that, off late, I've been omitting every detail of my all-of-a-sudden terrible, not-the-least-bit fun, so called 'life'.

Well. Twelfth, the most overrated year ever, has come to an official start (*weeps like she's never wept before*), and all of us are at our wits' end, studying for this exam and that test. Yes, life has taken a plunge into what is normally called chaos. Every 12th grader's life has become even crazier than their heads, with twenty or so lovely guides engulfing them day in and day out. Not a pretty sight, no sir.

Proof : I am half asleep right now, with a jumble of Physics formulae in my head and NOTHING on my paper today, mind you.

Things are going well indeed.

Oh, yes, and not to mention, it's the final year of schooling, and we are deprived of even a single second to sit back and think about every nostalgic memory that plagues us and makes us want to take a trip to the past. So.

On the bright side, there's always the immense amount of pampering you receive at home. Food, when you want it, if you want it (*sigh*), as THEY think you're always studying (THEY don't know anything, do they?). Chocolate, at your service, no lectures about losing weight, as every free second must be spent with your temporary love interest - Pradeep's FundaMental Physics (the seventeenth, extensively revised edition).

And, when it's not that, when you actually sit down for a breath or two, hoping upon hope that the hostile situations you face can soon be banished away, the clock strikes, and it's time for your Nth tuition class this week.

And they say miracles happen.

A Million Little Pieces

She couldn't help but feel that the perfection of her life was slowly falling apart. The beauty and serenity of it had shattered into millions of lifeless shards. Before, everything had been sketched out perfectly, with utmost sureness, like the markings on a map. Her past, her present, her future. Everything.

And then, this happened. The best, the worst thing of her life. Everything changed, and she was left stumbling in the dark, caught between choosing happiness and sorrow when she couldn't even see which was which. Oh, the unfairness of it all. If she was given a chance, she might have chosen differently, but she knew that she would have stumbled in the dark either way. For, no matter the choice, she would always be discontent; left with wondering what would have happened if she had chosen the other path.

But soon, she understood. She understood that it is impossible to be content if we are always thinking about the different possibilities of different choices. For there are many futures - many, many futures. But we choose only one, and it is only by accepting this choice of ours, can we remain content in this world of many possibilities, many futures, and many choices.

And so, she decided. She knew that she could go on stumbling in the dark, wondering if she would have been happier if fate had taken a different turn. Or, she could be content, believe that this is the happiest she could get, and accept that given the choice again, she wouldn't choose any other way.

So, she put the shards back together, piece by piece, the millions of lifeless shards. Slowly, patiently, she built back, breathed life into them. And when she was done, she felt stronger than ever before.