Tejaswini Kale
Maharashtra,India.
Little crystals of sugar exploding like mini-bombs in the boiling kettle
full of water.
It’s havoc down there
with explosions every minute white souls reducing to nothing, mixing in the colourless liquid.
It’s evening, around five
the sun about to bid goodbye leaving behind an orange glow sugary sweet like the tea
in my kettle.
It is boiling like the setting sun the aroma drifting everywhere in the little corners
where the ants scurry, hanging just over
the soiled rug,
reaching the startled sparrow by the window..
The rays of the sun, too, reach everywhere: they hide behind a leaf,
dance on a swaying branch or on a bird in flight.
They settle in a girl’s brown hair, illuminate a boy’s
surprisingly beautiful eye.
I walk to the window.
The sugary souls
with new meaning in my mug, the aroma reaching up to me in long, continuous wisps.
I look at the sky.
The sun barely visible,
but the orange glow intact.
I see the last of it
on a silhouetted tree,
in the bushy tail of the squirrel turning a darker shade of grey in the retreating sunlight.
The continuous sweet wisps,
the unceasing warm rays bidding adieu,
albeit with a promise of tomorrow.
I live for this moment each day.
I savour the life around me in this moment.
The continuity of night and day is meaningful on in this moment of transition,
of perfect peace and calm, and harmony
with my surroundings.
My lone moment of life amid all this mere existence.