Eighteen

By Ishika Aggarwal

Innocuous sips of uncertainty intertwined with dreameries,

Intoxicated me into an oblivion of despondency,

Tipsy with fear in the abyss of future failure,

I staggered mindlessly into the hazy hues of hope.

Hope, the four lettered lone firefly in the attic of my forlorn heart,

Dark with the dearth of desire, damp with dismay,

Swamped under the label of responsibility and changes,

Apparently inevitable when the candles read one and eight.

Eighteen, the number metastasises one overnight, 

To a wary figure with long locks of lament,

Palms in sweaty fists of the sceptic fickleness of the future,

Laid unconscious in the maze of metanoia.

Each envelope I held was either minted with melancholia,

Or withheld the only solution to my eyes’ salinity,

Disdain creeped through the many cracks of my cranium,

Acceptance involuntarily following through.

Innumerable heartbreaks over mere numbers on parchment,

Paralysed my very ability to self sympathise,

Condemned myself of every sliver of bliss,

If only I knew the darkness was ephemeral.

One day the tears mirrored the light of the firefly,

Ridding my heart of what seemed to be an eternal nightmare,

For what it once yearned for was no longer merely abstract,

It had materialised into the very path that once inhabited my reveries.

By Ishika Aggarwal