She had a distinct bend in her spine,
A lifetimes of chores,
Done responsibly, unflinchingly;
Carry weight.
Each responsibility completed,
Piled on weight of the desire sacrificed
And in the depleting currency of time
Body bent,
If only to curl up into the foetus of possibilities,
It had been long past.
She moves,
Slowly,
As though bereft of the need for thought or sight.
For often only movements came alive
Having lived through more ages than basic thought.
The rest of her was akin to precious jewelry,
Locked up in a treasure box;
Invaluable only in its unperturbed disuse.
Years of desuetude,
and all color fades to white.
Is then white the genesis or the apocalypse of colors?
And where does black fit in?
Hiding often in plain sight,
Ignored, dismissed, avoided,
As an unobtrusive blind spot.
She looks on at the old lady in the window,
Cradling her morning coffee on the cold, windy balcony.
Almost hypnotized by the allure
of what, to her, is an intimate acquaintance.
Privy to more
than a mere fleeting glance of curiosity could satiate.
The old lady is now bent over double,
trying to stow away the clean
albeit overused vessels.
And that's her cue to rouse the kids.
Do habits take shape in the belly of time,
or does time drink at the tavern of raucous habits?
A giant frog's leap away,
The old lady straightens her back,
Easing the ache of,
constantly reaching out low.
She smiles at the sight of the empty balcony;
Soon it will host a sleepily shrieking toddler
and that'll be her cue to catch the morning news.
Ah! How beautiful is humanity, and how interrelated its intricacies. I'm guilty at being a window gazer, sometimes just because I can and sometimes because it feels like a one-way intimate ticket to an unsuspecting fellow human's life. Yet what are we, but reflections of one another in different time and spatial dimensions. This prose is a perspective of perspectives and interrelations between us. Do share your perspective too :)
P.S.: Music credits - Comptine d'un autre été, l'après-midi or better known as the Amelie soundtrack. Give it a listen and you'd be transported to another time or vision.