The Backpacker

This is how I felt...this is how I still feel...The River, the bridge...a love that I could feel...A memory of him as I watch the dark waters flow by...

This moment will in memory live
As the moment I lived for,
For eight hundred days…
I peek into the river
Under the bridge that flows
I am aware, as I watch
The banks come close…
It was my love
That shaped earth into stones
The arch carved from faith
And columns molded of hope
On that bridge I stand
Over the river that flows…
Its beams are promises
Made and promises kept,
Styled after my dreams
After night long gone…
When heavy in heart I feel,
I will run down my memory
To return to the moment
To peek into the river
Under my bridge that flows…

Its an old story of Dinosiyus, the tyrant and his friend Damocles, the poor man who desired to be rich...The Sword of Damocles is really used as an allusion to something that "never goes away." It could be guilt, fear, anything, but it is just that "soemthing" that prevents you from going on to enjoy what you have.

Now, I thought of this because I find myself in the same place...a sword hanging over my head by a thin thread that could fall any minute and kill me. I dont know if I would be glad if that happened, but the relief would be welcome, nevertheless. What is life is you constantly find a sword hanging on your head? Or more precisely, till I know that my most precious object is up on sale? Can I rest till it is withdrawn? Can I rest after it is sold? How can one stand to see one's love on sale? 

I imagine things, yes, am a writer, an aritst in love with my words. But even to the most common man, the picture of their soul on sale for public bidding is a nightmare. It is a nightmare, because despite being a writer, I am still an ordinary person who loved.

I cannot stand the thought that someone will come along and ask him : Name, age, income, religion, status...then look him up and down, measure him, his temperaments, his looks, dig up his past, contemplate on his future, compare him to the many others they have already seen, suggest changes...generally look him up like a prize horse. No, I cant stand to think that my love will be valued like a common commodity, one among the thousands and in the end some pompous father of a wannabe bride would come along and say, "well....maybe...he is alright, maybe...lets see."

No. Why does not the world understand that my precious love is not up there to be valued by traders?  He is his own person and why should anyone come along to pass a judgement on him? Who has the right to his past? None. No one. His future? No one. Not even I, the one who loves him beyond belief. Why does he then allow himself to be wighed by the common standards the man has set? He is not a commodity to be categorised depending on his age or caste?

Or worse, why, oh why does my very own love subject himself to these inhuman trade? Why?

Till such time I see his picture up there for the world to come along and give their verdict, the sword will hang...waiting, wondering, praying...

But if the hammer falls...I know where I cannot run. The sowrd falls quicker than my feet can carry me away...    

In your eyes

Is a story untold

Yet I know,

Before next chapter unfolds

That I play a role

In none of them

I looked for me

In every verse

In every line

And every word

But found me nowhere

Then I sighed                    

And turned to the moon

Red in the face

Just going up to work

Yet finding time

To play a game of hide and seek

I ask him why

Why am I not alive

In your eyes

Why is that,

As characters go

I find no part to play

For you know

As far as feeling go

None can match

What I feel for you

The naughty moon

Slowly smiled

And to me said,

How, in his story

can you find

yourself?

Don’t you know,

You are the very ink,

The very paper

On which the story

He writes?

Then he went up the sky

And the corners of my eyes dried

For the moon was…HOPE