Papillion-ed

On Friday evenings, the parking lot and the place where the buses are parked are a battle zone. People, having put in more hours of work during the week than they’d like to, are always rushing pell-mell as if this is the last weekend they’ll ever get to live. It is almost amusing, how they barely glance at the people to who they wave goodbye every other day of the week.

Everyone’s got something else or the other on their minds. Last Friday, however, a very faith-filled thing happened. There was a man walking towards the buses in front of me. I didn’t notice him until he slowed down, veered off-course and stooped to pick something up.

It was a dying butterfly, the symbol of frailty. It was a tiny quivering mass in his large palm. The man then proceeded to slowly meander through the umpteen people, diagonally cutting through the parking lot (yes, I followed him) and placed the butterfly on the rain-drenched grass under a white-flowered tree. Fitting, I’d say, for something so beautiful. No one else noticed, no one stopped to save a dying butterfly from being trampled upon.

We have become too busy these days. But that butterfly did well to be found by him, and he was made a better man by that act. I get to hold on to faith. Kudos to the butterfly-man!

Loss

I tend to feel most emotions on an extreme level. And even though I have consciously tried to tone the feelings down, I can’t seem to.
Loss, I have felt, as a void only after a certain period of time has passed. Initially, however, the feeling has been the exact opposite. It is that of a rising swell, like a huge wave of water, which rises from deep within and fills me to the brim. The feeling is akin to being in a closed space and water levels rising to fill it, eventually going down under it. Here that closed coffin-like space is my body. The wave is heavy and strong in its pressure against my skin, and it is all I can do to hold it in. If I try to let it out, it is just a dry, hollow sob.
As time rolls on, this feeling is replaced by one of needle-like pain, in pin-points. It is, as if, someone is inside me, jabbing outwards… and with every sting, remembrance of the lost, hurt in hot white flashes. Every minute is filled with a buzz of torture, of yearning and pain, of indignation and wrath, all directed within.

After a while yet, void. A void that will never fill, no matter how good the replacement is…

Protean

Shifting

Like clouds on a windy day,

The ephemeral map,

Charting changing distances on the skies,

Like the places you took me to.

Infinite

Like the waves on the shores,

Receding only to swallow up,

Those paths mirrored across the sky,

Like memories forgotten.

Palpable

Like dew on forest leaves,

Raining down in gusty throes,

And disappearing into eternity,

Like the look in my eyes,

Where mysteries lie…