Travellers’ Final Station

By Yuvankshi Venugopal

There’s a heavy sense of burden lurking loosely over the last station of the city I hail from. This ache often finds its way over the shoulders of the lonely passengers waiting for trains that never come to destinations they’ve never heard of. The nine mirrors across the old English walls of solitude reflect the worsts of my nightmare. Kindness is a weapon most men refuse to acknowledge and my defeat thus is reckless and powerful. We, lonely passengers, have all the same shadows of sorrowful and deep eyes. We’re merely kids in search of better days and between the lines I breathe paradoxes of the beauty in pain and the terror in joy.

Men are paradoxes. They tell me blue pink and purple look good on me and I caress my wounds to acknowledge these shades of angst complement my incompleteness. I’ve pleaded allegiance to the consult of the years and thus believe only wisdom to be the truest form of treasure. Life as it is, is a journey unexplored and these passengers passing by are souls seeking to be lost in the order of the ordinary. Kindness is a weapon they wear around their neck to contain the defeat of their ache and you’ll often find them describing tenderness as a generous mother’s first embrace and a loving father’s kiss on the forehead for they long for a lover as polite, tender and kind, one they believe they will never find.

By Yuvankshi Venugopal