When It's Over Poem by Tharuna Devchand

Dear friend, that time has come again:
everyone smiles with happy hearts
and scatter...
and by and by I sigh, pick up my burden and walk away,
thinking that I should look back.
At what? Except days and days and days;
all black and white, shot in an isolated studio
with cushioned windows and a star-filled ceiling.
This year -
Oxygen... tick
Floss... tick
Bare necessities.... Sigh
What's there to look back at?
Girls who have loved and women who have lost;
a man who faced truths that burnt through his skin;
and children, lots and lots of children that looked to the sky in wonder.
I often wonder how it feels to know that your thoughts are but a tumour,
and how much it takes to love a man that only cares about himself...

I look back.
Before my hair can settle back on my shoulders,
my eyes wander to that patch of grass, now lightened by the sun.
It was the patch of grass on which his shadow lay.

This poem was never meant to be about him,
but when I looked back, he was all that I wanted to see.

Dear friend, I have little left to say, and much is just repetitions.
The empty rooms and dusted blackboards have no words to reveal.
Libraries lie coffined in silence. All that remains are memories,
wafting through the gaps in the bricks...
Some already forgotten
beneath the layers of grass stains and melted icecream.

Behind me, there are only vacant seats
growing brighter and more colourful with every step I take away...
deluding me with elusive temptation.
Oh friend, how happy I am to walk away
despite the lines of regret within my frown.
They will fade as I walk
step by step
towards you.