Cusps by Vaishnavi Anand
One lightheaded late night, a pick from the nights
when you’re too tired of the commonplace but not for deep conversations,
I had one about Life and Death…
Two important threads in time–
a thin light blue cotton thread spanning Life,
Being pulled by an iron needle
of the mechanical hands of Time.
a stoic breathless pause to note the contents.
Then,
he puts a Death knot and snips away.
Finishing a unique pocket
so unique only its own bar tacks match.
a brimming pocket, holding the sea of Life’s events.
Drown
and find the eddies taking you along.
Notice the edges of the seas, subtle folds in the garment
and realise that what look like folds
are those labyrinth walls, those pages proclaiming the end of a section,
the silver linings in Time,
a trough for a period before and after.
Like that broken leg forcing suffocating stillness on you
when your nature is hurry-burry work,
The first courageous you not running away
from answering tough questions,
When you finally acknowledge growth is more
mashed potatoes than crispy roasts,
When Time brings the right person for you
among the eddy-like millions
swirling in and out of your Life.
Those subtly powerful memories form strong hinges,
swinging open
A door to a new thread, one interconnected with so many more.
Time perhaps spins a cobweb inside that pocket.
In an intellectually stimulative conversation,
In an opinion shared lies a decision,
In a decision lies a memory.
In Life, we trace back everything to a memory. Our birth.
Our wants. Our fears. Our needs. Our conversations. How we think, how we feel happy,
Our lessons,
All but from a memory.
In that sea of memories, our opinions are but streams.
Drown
and find those hinges once more
and realise that they are events
so subtle and yet so telling
like the lemon yellow flush in the dawn sky,
Pinpricks, pellets of dust
The undulating sand dunes may be abandoned in Time–the only lessons
we take along, stamped on our soul,
as our Life’s pocket is finished with Death’s knot.
like few untraceable strings thrown in the ocean as waste,
we’ll stand holding them,
see as all the sea
evaporates forevermore.
Vaishnavi Anand (she/her) is an Indian student and poet (Instagram @thevariegatedpen) hailing from Chennai in the south of India. She is doing her undergraduate studies in information technology and, in her free time, is absorbed in poetry or bird photography. She writes abstract poetry that are on human qualities, life lessons from the commonplace, or nature.