Coffin.

I live in this oblong room, and this room is my prison. I have heard of many seas, never seen many; I have heard of snow-capped mountains, never climbed any; I have heard of dark, perilous forests, never been to any. I sit in this middle-class household’s urban and well-furnished room. My tasks have been laid out, my escape blocked, and the lock though not on the latch, the spirit suffers in the emotional blockade of society.

I live in this oblong room, where there are pink walls and a dilapidated bed, where the only wilderness is few remnants of cobwebs, and the bed bugs on my sheet. I am a captive of my birth, searching to find all that is heard of, and praised. I have heard lark’s sweet song, but only on Television, and I have travelled to lush green tea estates only a few miles away from my home, but on Television.

I live in this oblong room, with its maze of furniture, torn papers, all thoughts in earnest yet lacking experience of life. I yearn to tell a story, talk of journeys and adventures, aye, I want to live, but am a victim of survival.
My health is sound, and energy yearning, my love for creation intact to admire the marvels, but alas, I live in this oblong room with pink walls and pink curtains and a dying canvas bed. Even this oblong room seems to be dying, it is always cold as a chilly carcass and it is always numbing, and the slumbers troubled.

I live in this oblong room, and my doors are different. I like it alone, as it is my respite from a long forgotten past, and now the way of my life.

I look at this room people call as mine-
I look at those pink walls, the oblique windows, pink curtains, furniture and dried coconut shells.
And then I look at all those torn papers scribbled away under the pressure of my lost ink and lost thoughts, crumbling to dust. Sometimes the light reflects the darkness outside.
Perhaps it is my room that is darker, coffin like. I see no lock, yet I feel bound.
Locked myself inside, I have thoughts of outside world, and often I ponder of mountains and monasteries.

I try to plan, to set out for the journey to find those places only known to me to exist in Television.

Perhaps I am waiting for the time to come, perhaps I am looking for the key to an unlocked door. Perhaps walls are supposed to be pink, perhaps I am waiting for my bed to sink.

Perhaps it is something else.

I live in this oblong room.

© Karthik Adithya Singaraju