Roulie Singh
I stand opposite to the road that splits into two,
Like a shaft of hair breaking through.
The walk from home was one too long,
Each day the winds wispered the same song,
The familiar roads where the houses never changed.
But now as I stand on the verge of adulthood,
Impatient at the sight of the alien lanes.
The winds sing in a foreign language,
The spaces on either side of the roads run naked, disengaged.
I look past my past in a flash,
they say, at gun point your entire life flashes back,
I dread the thought, maybe the beginning is the end of the track.
Back home, I had no worries,
No power comes with no responsibilities.
Everything predetermined,
General orders of military precision.
Speak only when asked,
A raised eyebrow signals when to hold back.
I have had a long journey,
From infancy to adolescence,
From innocence to ignorance,
Gibberish to silence.
Too accustomed to the comfort of dark thoughts and dim lights,
The sun of hope shines much too bright for my eye sight.
I am the elephant in an open cage.
Unbothered to turn the menu page.
A marionette whose strings have come loose,
But her head still hangs low at the weight of an invisible noose.
No, not indecisive;
Just inexperienced with the privilege to choose.
My back is hunched over with emotional baggage,
'Always travel light', still am clung to obsolete garbage.
The insides spill out, there seems to be a leakage,
Of clotted thoughts and memories bleeding out in the haemorrhage.
Thoughts bloom and wither in one blow,
Like entangled knots of hair too dry to comb.
A little jerk and they fall right down,
Sprinkling on the hard ground.
But none help with the dilemma at hand,
The two divergent roads, in the middle of whom I stand.
A distant memory strikes my mind just when all hope is lost,
Take the road not taken, said Robert Frost.
But now as I glance at the roads in broad daylight,
I freeze at the sight,
for both the roads are untrodden, much to my delight.
As to one with no history and knowledge of architecture,
Every building is a mirror image of the other.
The two lanes are parallels, scorn enemies who live by the sword, die by the sword.
Much like the armies of black and white on chess boards,
Pitched against each other by history and societal conventions of their own accord.
But when the board is revolved at 360 constantly,
Like planets running round the sun eternally.
From a higher perspective, an overall view,
It evolves and changes shape and color into a grey hue.
So far away from where I stand, it's all grey,
the chessboard and the two roads.
So I make a move with eyes closed,
Unaware of left or right,
Unbothered with black or white,
Wrong or right.
I imagined the earth would start to shake,
The sky would fall and turn lilac blue.
I waited, it was just a matter of time, I knew.
But instead, the winds sweep my hair in the same direction, there is nothing new.
No fairies, no dragons, no genies,
No secret passage came into view.
Hoping for something, a twitch of an eye, some omen of guarantee;
I ask the wind "Is this it? Is this the road that leads me to my destiny?
"Welcome home, keep moving, I'm just glad you made a choice"
Like the queen I dance tap-tapping in all directions at the echo of my own voice.