Tick and tick, the clock strolls ever so inchmeal, as if the night has been draped within the curves of infinity. I lay here barren, unbothered by any cajole despite all the jibber-jabber echoing inside my teensy head. As Billie Holiday continues to run on a loop, I wonder if she had lost her charm or is it my stone-cold heart that is running scarce of any sentiments, what so ever. I need a reefer, I tell myself. I need to get high.

I take a look around, it is all Stygian yet why isn't it dark enough for me? "What is it I lack?" I ask myself. May be hope, I don't recall the last time I hoped for something. May be I held Ellis Redding's words too soberly when he warned Andy Dufresne "Hope is a dangerous thing". Or may be I stopped hoping long before that.

I feel nothing but appalled. I am terrified of people, their warmth, the glint they carry with them, the hope they bring. A part of me wants to be heard, but it is scared to converse. It frowns whenever confronted. It seems like somebody bundled up all hope that was reposed within me and tossed it in the lake, nearby. I don't know when it began, may be when the tides washed off the first sand-castle I was building? Or may be when santa didn't show up on that lousy christmas morning. Or I guess when I texted goodbye to who I thought was my betrothed, someone I hoped I would see forever with. Well all I know is I lost hope on people, I may have lost hope on myself.

And may be this is where it went wrong for me. A person without hope is just like a poet without a muse, he piles up poems which makes no sense, which pour forth no sentiments. The verses are as empty as the spaces between them. The poet eventually decomposes within a poetic tomb, and I don't want to be that poet, not anymore. I don't want to be a gritty grain of that same old verse. I want to write again, write ballads, filled with faith.. I want to leave the world a better place than I found it. I want to get high, high on hopes.


© Sagnik