Still

By Nidhi

In English we say,

time waits for no one.

But in poetry we say,

it waits beside me anyway

breathing lightly,

watching me forget what to do with it.

I am twenty-five,

and already losing time.

Not in the way hours vanish,

but in the way I can feel them leaving,

grain by grain,

like I’m the hourglass

and the sand has somewhere better to be.

The mornings leave without me.

The tea cools in its cup.

Even sunlight collects dust here.

I scroll through the hours like channels,

each one a rerun.

People say,

you have time.

But that’s the cruellest mercy

to be given something

you can’t seem to touch.

In English we say,

I’ll start tomorrow.

But in poetry we say,

tomorrow has stopped calling my name.

The ice sighs itself into water

before I can drink it.

My phone battery dies beside me

while the charger waits,

even electricity grows tired of waiting.

The guilt is patient.

It sits beside me on the bed,

taps its fingers to the rhythm of another wasted hour,

whispers,

you could have done something by now.

But I don’t.

I stay.

Breathing, barely,

the kind that fogs the mirror

but doesn’t warm it.

It isn’t sadness exactly,

more like the slow quiet of rust.

The body still works,

the heart still hums,

but something essential

has gone out of sync.

In English we say,

move on.

But in poetry we say,

I am still,

as in motionless,

as in yet,

as in barely here.

I am still watching everyone else

grow toward their own light.

Still measuring my worth

in undone lists and half-read books.

Still pretending I’m waiting for something,

when really,

I’m waiting for myself.

If time is a river,

I am the quiet bend it forgot to carry.

If time is a house,

I am the room where no one turns the light on.

If time is a body,

I am the breath it keeps meaning to take.

In English we say,

time waits for no one.

But in poetry we say,

I’m still here,

and somehow,

time is the one moving on.

By Nidhi