‘If you miss the train I’m on, you will know that I’m gone’-500 Miles

To tell you that I’m leaving or wait for the scratch on the tracks that saw me leave, tell you that I’m gone. And every tree, dust or rebellious beat of the heart, as equal and unequal it may have become, will walk in unison because they too would have stopped caring.

The shirt which saw us covering our coerced bodies shies away as if it were entirely our fault, and each promise, peculiarly pragmatic, now looks like it has been plagiarized, lifted from the souls that have already lived each tragedy.

And the road which wants us ‘walking happily’ seems to be selectively staged, for the wise did it better when they embraced the impending tragedy right on their first step.

Looks on our faces befriend every stranger on the streets but who is it that will stay, while we lie insignificantly on our death-beds, glowing as if the brightest star in the night sky has visited our homes, but in denial, because no one can save us now.

You say that rejection is agonizing, but have you ever loved someone so deeply that you can no longer feel anything now, no matter how much you try.

Every goer quietly writes, and every story enchantingly marvels, but who is it that writes, not to be read by a million, but understood by just a few. It’s not magic that fascinates, but the daily depths of life that have us floating intermittently every second.

The dark spots on our backs reflect prudently on our faces yet we are so blind to even notice. Maybe to leave is to say that one can no longer continue with the debacle that is inflicted on this soil anymore, by no one but us.

And every whistle along the road will just be a reminder that you’ve left. But no one cries, O life, tucked in such elaborate nakedness.

The ‘crowd’ is beautifully interwoven in our lives just to teach us that no one will truly stay. And it’s yourself only, who dances to every beat, unaware of the direction that each string of melody is leading us towards. Maybe that’s all that we’ll ever be.

And time is just a driver of happiness as well as hollowness. For the things that hurt us, we try to forget, and things that did not, we regret on never truly experiencing.

The train which takes you to ‘paradise’ is filled with depressed artists and the seat that you so pleasingly take has already been wept on by someone else.

And to embrace tragedy miserably or sing to its tune each time the skies get dark, is all that’s left of life here.

Every penny will have been stained, the curtains set on fire, land of our kind destroyed and the universe obliterated into nothingness, and that is when ‘nothing’ would have a new meaning. It’s when the train leaves, that we realize what we’ve lost.

-Yogesh Chandra