Limitless

All of us have an innate essence, 
an echo of our souls,
which some identify early on 
because someone else paid attention.

I think mine is a love of stories and storytelling.
Otherwise why would curt, caustic dadi
become my superstar at night-time,
when she would take a tale out 
from her treasure chest of myths,
and tell them again and again at my happy insistence.

How the big dipper was actually the sapta rishis 
is the only one I remember the details of.
The rest of them are tracings on the paper of memory
of who I became and who she became.

She became the sun -
I could rest into the child.

My eyes would grow bigger and brighter
as her pitch raced up and down.
She weaved through the words to the finish line,
but the surprise was never in the ending.
It was in the entrancing envelope 
we created in those moments 
of pure devotion to fun.
Fun became joy became beauty.

I forgot her coldness, all coldness,
in the warmth of the stories. 
It didn’t matter who was the villain,
or what distresses the damsel found herself in,
as long as the story was being told.

She has been dead for a long time.
Light-years away, like the Big Dipper, 
like mother. She reaches me now for those nights only.
She shimmered then, and I did too, 
and I want that for us.

I can forgive the other nights.

I remember her also for the key she unknowingly gave me.
A key to other buried vaults.
It tells me to become the sun.

The Big Dipper highlighted in a photo by ^_^ on Unsplash

Written during a session with the CoCreate Club, hosted by Raju Tai and Vimal Chitra.