Chapter 1: Hiraeth
A storm brews within the rib cage,and I dream of distant lands,
away from the crowds
and the noise of the mind.
I soak in memories of a past
which cleaved from my timeline
a long time ago.
I escape
to a broken bench
in the neighborhood park,
or to a footpath strewn with fallen leaves,
or to the comfort of a couch
in a home far away from home.
Chapter 2: Saudade
or in the unfamiliarity
of familiar faces
on a rowdy Saturday night,
when the restless voices are muted,
and existence
pulsates with a dull pain,
a pain
trapped in the sillage of teenage escapades
a pain
of broken promises
Chapter 3: Fernweh
I drifted
in the wilderness
of an ethereal world
where beasts
sprinted through each other,
through me.
Flowering creepers
sprouted from white-washed corals
of the deep,
and luminous antlers
branched out of moss-covered stone
walls.
A thousand suns
shone in the churning sky.
The gods and goddesses,
and every being – mythical and
mundane,
were pure mist, not flesh.
Visitors like me
sailed in caravans
through the golden sands
and their voyage never cost a
dime.
The story
of any magical land
is not complete
without its self-indulgent villain–
a multi-headed, multi-armed
ascetic
who lived on a mythical mountain top, the shikara,
wore dreadlocks
decked with skulls of fire-breathing wolverines,
smoked marijuana,
rode a donkey,
and declared himself a prophet.
His acolytes
bled at his feet
and spewed profane verses
into the gutters of a raging
volcano.
It was a fantastical, fierce, and fertile
planet
in every sense of the word.
Last I remember,
I had bookmarked the book
and closed my eyes.
I checked my watch,
the dream belonged to a blink
of time—
like a little bird’s nap,
a dream to be treasured
in my chest of fractured memories.
In a few hours,
I must battle
the bumper-to-bumper madness,
the Monday blues,
and the simmering rage
of the dog days of summer.
How I wish
the odyssey had stretched across
lifetimes.
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