There's only the slightest difference,
between the sound of
a switch being turned on and off.
A severely miniscule variation in pitch;
almost as if a wary baker,
added one more to a dozen.
There's a certain bass in the "off" switch,
the last sounds of a dying object;
are heavier,
as if they come from within its metallic soul
and desire to settle somewhere
within cold concrete below.
Tired of living in the same old room.
Forgotten in the now,
remembered only when in disrepair.
Touched,
yet never really felt.
The "on" switch hovers
somewhere within the octave above,
on an instrument that has only 1 note.
and that note stretches out,
to seventeen pitches yet.
A slight hope,
not as big as a sliver,
not as small as a single switch.
It stays suspended in the air,
almost as if interrupted in mid-sentence,
with hope for new tidings in the offing.
Distance between these switches is 39 minutes.
A white blank stretch.
If you look carefully,
there's evident traces of time's merciless movement below.
As if blood-stained walls were whitewashed,
half-heartedly.
39 minutes of bright light,
twice a day.
My days are but 78 mins,
almost a fourth of these cold winters.
and thus, today is my seventeenth.
I remember living for 17 before too.
But in this whitewashed prison,
the switches are banished to just beyond
the reach of the barely alive insiders.
For light is a rationed gift,
reserved for those who,
with a clear conscience;
can abuse it with mirth.
And what is time,
if not the afterthought of seemingly all-embracing sight?
With no switches to morph light within;
Time is but ephemeral as the fleeting Sun,
here now,
only to retreat like defeated troops
on gruesome battlefields.
And so I will retreat too.
And with closed eyes,
conjure up my own days;
For I cannot morph time's passing,
but can bend space to
live through irradiated remnants of the past.
Is time really ever the same for everyone?
Prose attempts to understand the passage of time through the eyes of the one who is imprisoned and believes that the key lies outside in, movement then, becomes the game of imagination doesn’t it?