Parable With Time Travel by Ashish Kumar Singh
46 lines
Issue 2 (Spring/Summer 2023)
Once I became a bulbul
and tore through the concept of time,
like a bullet that flees the body
leaving behind only an absence
in the form of a hole.
What I mean is
that the past was no longer a country
I wasn’t allowed to visit
but an open land inviting birds to warm
their bodies in nostalgia.
From above as I flew
with clouds made orange,
I saw myself or my younger self
laying on the grass yellowed with summer.
Beside me was a boy I liked
who I imagined liked me back.
Fifteen and already in love!
When I perched on a tree,
the view was as clear as a memory,
as glass, as a song dedicated to the gods.
For an hour we lay
as the sun sank like a shot animal
and talked about days
scattered only arms length away.
As I watched
with my button-like eyes, the tree
shaking so slightly under my claws,
I wondered if I remember how this ended
when the boy got up,
said we should head back home,
the shock I saw in my eyes as apparent
as a bruise on the skin.
I thought I didn't get to confess what I had
rehearsed the night before.
He thrust his hands towards me
and what could I have done but to take them,
leaving the script
unread for another time.
How I wish I had come back to this moment
with a human tongue, how
then I would have sung the wisdom
I know now,
that youth does not last, neither
the crimes of it,
so say, stay and tell him everything
while I watch the stars come out.