Bits Of Life

Bits Of Life

I'm holding a fountain pen

A very beautiful one

Heavy

Balanced

Wanting me to write on paper

The handwriting similar but different from a few years ago

When I wrote more than reminders to myself or

Signed on cheques

Cheques too are out of date

But then I might forget to write

And see what my handwriting looks like-

Now it leans a little more to the left

And is spiky, more perfunctory

But also more assertive

Running hand means the letters run into each other

More

Bits of Life

Come back as space debris

The inside of the remembered mind is 

Like space

A vast semi-lit place

Its edges lost in the shadows

So bits of things

Parts

Like things in a wrecker's yard

The mess there is professional

Deliberately unpaved

Always peopled by an uncouth dog

That the Wrecker obviously loves 

Things lie around so that they can be found and sold

Even stacks of parts are just there

Leaning radiators

Pipes and pipes

To save space for the many body parts

The glint of faded colours

In the light of day or the dull light of lamplight at night

But in the night a  wrecker's yard 

Keeps secrets 

For afternoon

There are

Blues, blacks, 

Whites with rust spots

Chrome 

Dimpled and sometimes twisted

All with their stories

Some worth telling

Recognizable as parts of a context by those that sold objects to the wrecker

But now just parts to others

Or a restoration target

In your space debris of the mind

You know the flotsam and jetsam 

With unique long forgotten emotional charges

Like current

Mostly if they are recent

There is nothing surprising about it

 But old things

Long forgotten

Come from a long time ago

Like space travellers from years ago

When they were joined to other pieces

And meant something all together-

With bits and thoughs and words that are not here but you find yourself trying to remember

What it was exactly

Groping in the dark

Awake but it came to take you unawares

When you were asleep

It is disturbing to see bits of a dismembered life

What is the purpose of these regurgitated

Fragments?

What is the point of recalling shards

These bits of life

Now floating with little emotional charges

That can shake you up

Are they revisiting with a desire to say something new?

Or are they just travelling in space and you happened to look at them squarely

As they passed.

June 9th, 2020

Gautam Mukherjee