Sometimes,
The present is just a giant overblown balloon
That’s now bust.
And it zooms around this emptiness,
In terribly awkward sounds
And blind movements,
Leaving behind
Terribly awkward silence,
And nothing.
And then the past zooms in,
A giant looming hot air balloon
Distorted in dimensions,
Stretching out the pain on its façade
And storing away the happiness
In the ropes that tether it
To the basket of ever evolving fiery self.
Fumes of burnt time,
Feed the memoirs of pain.
And suddenly
Everything is smoky,
Blurry,
Eyes run rivers of black tears,
And lungs fill up with toxic fumes of
Unresolved issues,
That will affect the lifetime yet to be lived.
The face on the looming balloon
Seldom changes,
As if the pain were stacked up
In order of impact
And the first stack was significant enough
To subsume the rest.
Do we have only the one throbbing vein of pain?
Some questions are better when unasked;
For once asked,
Curiosity douses one;
In highly flammable kerosene
Of realistic thoughts and vague ideas,
And soon,
The vacant space is filled with many more hot air balloons,
Each more terrifying than the other,
And there’s not enough left for me to stand.
I try.
I try to escape.
But one of the floating orbs of pain trips over,
And soon,
The Balloons and I
Are inseparable in abject combustion;
One in tears,
Another in smoke.
And there’s nothing in nothing again.
When I open my eyes,
Balloons seem a far off memory,
An overreaction almost
To an irrelevant stimuli,
And the present is grounded again
In the four walls and a window,
Around me.
How majestic are hot air balloons, and how strange. When we look at them, we imagine creatures of unbidden wonder, full of hot air, skiing over clear skies and ripe sunsets. Yet only the other day, when I saw this image of a hot air balloon, devoid of all its grandeur and losing life rapidly as it landed, I couldn't calibrate that something as brilliant could be something as despondent when it was done with. Isn't that how our ruminations over the spilled past feel, so grand when triggered, so insignificant when viewed objectively as their absolute selves!
And with this, may you begin your new year on the note of objectivity, of landing hot air balloons, and within the comfort of your four walls and a window. Happy New Year!