When I was younger, the world
beckoned me to explore it,
to play football on the streets
using the gates of houses as
goals, to ride my bicycle into
neighbouring districts, finding
unfamiliar faces my age and
befriending them, but as I grew
older, I sought to bring the world
to my dimensions, to hold its
length, breadth and depth in
my palm as if I were a god,
the beginning and
the end, the Alpha and the Omega,
the eternal now who conquered
reality with his imagination,
but this made me grow smaller —
tinier and tinier, until I became as
infinitesimal as a sigh, a little
fly hovering around in a gloomy
apartment with dim lighting.
Then passive and resigned,
I settled for nothing,
I gave up the ghost, though I
still walked, my utterances
becoming monosyllabic,
my thoughts adrift in no-man’s-land,
but now, after years of struggling
with myself, boxing my shadow
and trying to grasp purpose,
I feel a nascent hope glowing,
still amorphous, but within reach.
It doesn’t usher me to mystical
peace or a raw communion with
nature. It doesn’t demand sacrifice
or conflict or the quotidian giving
and receiving of love. It only asks me
to accept myself, to shed diffidence
and learn to be.
Photo by Saketh Garuda on Unsplash
Ordinary Person 
Leave a Reply