Search For Light

By Aarshia Ray

The streets gleam with yellow lights overhead,

Enthusiasm of the frenzy of humankind,

Sophistication of urbanism,

Elegant vehicles of modern society

Racing past flawless roads with prim green dividers;

Rubber tyres scratching concrete

With its air of independence—

Stifling freedom grappling a metropolitan.

I look out of the glass window:

People with individual cares

The city composed of smiles and sorrows

Exact and intermingled in a gigantic web

Melancholic overtones of wind and pollution;

The city never dies:

You need a heart for it to break.

But I am hopeful,

I search for a heart in every soul:

In everyone, I look for you.

My family names me emotional

Oh, too emotional, sensitive, sentimental,

So trusting, so lost in childish dreams

Of wonder and innocent delight.

Some kind ones say, with a tone

That speaks of sympathy rather than understanding,

“That’s an imaginative soul.”

I remain being hopeful.

I am not unknown to darkness, no,

But I believe in the presence of light.

And everybody agrees to one stance:

“That one’s too delicate for this dark world.”

But I will look for you,

In every corner, in every alley,

In every turning of my vehicle,

Whichever road I land in,

And whichever path I choose to take

In every face I have to face,

Every summer’s parching strain

And every winter’s comfort slumber

And every time Spring’s bird chirps

However loud the city’s honk be—

Every time the sky cries,

And every time it smiles at me;

When the storm strikes out electricity,

And we are all cast in suffocating distress,

Hopeless, miserable, confused, scared,

I will think of the light,

And I will search for it:

I will search for you.

By Aarshia Ray