A Call From An Almost Forgotten Number

By Vishikha Deogawnka

The years have begun to weary us now

The sieves of my mind retain too little

The tiredness of your eyes have given way to wrinkles

Time unbound firmly guarded

The door of our estrangement

The Sun gleamed red, a beacon of change

A beckoner of the strange

Another nightmare, I brushed it off

Yet the number reappeared,

And waves of passive remembrance swept over my disbelief

In a trice, the sun, it was all yellow

In a trice, it was you, me and that wretched everglow

Cunning was that artist who painted our skies

Startling clouds of our memories he materialised

And the Grey skies wept

For your voice’s unchanged cadence

Like tepid waters, soothing all their scars

Eons elapsed and the storm subsided

Known waters once again were tested

As eventually we found our way back

We laughed at our follies and buried the tears underneath

Perhaps sometimes the road less taken is the one that heals

Night falls and all that is left to say

Remains unspoken

In the silences that stitch together our sorrow

The scratchy line, comforting and familiar as always

Bends backwards, burdened by a trillion tiny stars

Dotting the fragments that we could never put together

Lighting the darkness that we could never brave together

And all that you need to know

Is that I remember why I need to forget it all

More than the dragonflies remember our happiness

More than the stars remember our promises.

By Vishikha Deogawnka