11:11 and Me

By Avani Tiwari

Reading between the lines,

and beyond what lies,

has always made me feel like home.

A strange feeling of having a home.

But what never sits well with me is asking for a wish.

It strikes 11:11, a divine time, she says-

but I have nothing to wish for,

nothing to say.

I always painted my sky blue,

tried to get every shade right,

sky blue, baby blue,

the blue of notebooks and nostalgia.

But all I see now is grey.

There’s nothing wrong with that color.

Grey is stillness.

Grey is surrender.

Grey is what happens when you’ve tried to name every shade of blue

and none of them fit anymore.

So now, my skies are grey ,

and the lakes I once sang to

bleed black, and dry.

And then she says again:

“11:11 — make a wish! Don’t keep a shish!”

She laughs,

like it’s simple ,

like hope should come with a rhyme.

You move your lips, don’t make a sound, feels more like a fish.

You don’t have dreams, you say?

But what does it even mean?

What does it mean to not wish?

To not ache?

To have no burning candle inside your chest

begging to be lit?

Some say it’s peace.

While some might say,

you’re drowning yourself in a lake you cried your fears and failures out to fill.

I don’t know which one I carry in my pocket ,

but it’s always a letter, empty.

Trying to accumulate some words,

though all it’s got till now are creases… and a stroke.

For once, I felt.

Or maybe, I was awake .

And every day, when that divine moment comes,

my mind goes blank ,

just like the letter I carry in my pocket.

Except my mind doesn’t even have creases or strokes.

It’s not because my soul is busy picking up shards of its own,

still apologising to the stone that struck too hard.

It’s because of the story,

in which I read between the lines

and beyond what lies.

Because I hear the silence speak ,

even when I’m ill at ease,

it proceeds to speak.

By Avani Tiwari