Swimming In A Pond

Everything's changed. It's 7 pm and I am chasing a sunset on Chetak Bridge. 81 red sign boards crowd it from either end - what a distasteful avenue. Every day I take the same route, bend my bike at the same edge, and find myself making the same decision of taking the shorter route home. It's 7 pm and I am not crying. The sunset has washed over everything in its vicinity, the signs are glowing, the rims sparkle with a touch of mandarin, and the sky - like a vase of emotions poured into a painting.

It was 7 pm, and someone at the half-ajar gates debated if they'd give me a ride home, an unkindness welcomed at the time. It was 7 pm and i was sitting at a party with a pool of friends debating if my other friends have a right to their pronouns. It's 7 pm and a boy decides to break my heart. It is 7 pm and i decide to let it go.

and every day since, i drove over this bridge and the benevolence of the sky would break my being. my vision would dissolve in my tears, and my heart, like a fish climbing out of water to save itself from the world she calls home.

But,

today was different, crayons are rubbed against the sky, i can breathe. i have an emery walker room in a small indian town where i no longer fight to belong. the trees are all as is, the leaves flutter at the hint of a breeze, and the flowers - absent, i'll photoshop them into my mundane. i belong as any of these do, in a small tinkering, unwavering, and insignificant way.

It's been a year and i have cried every single one of these days, and the trains passing under the bridge still don't wait, the cars all skimper away, and yet today is somehow very different.