That I blinked and ten years had passed.
Now I do my best to keep these eyelids apart,
Lest another decade evade me
Ten friends dead, five brothers lost.
Three lovers gone and many years to atone.
Must life be this harsh?
In the lessons it teaches.
Must she be this cruel?
Lady life and her fleeting touch,
Lady love and her sizzling scorch.
And yet, like a moth to a flame,
Love’s allure still reels me in.
And life just won’t let me go… yet.
I sniffed a flower, the other day.
And then watched as the sun set across the Nile,
I looked into the eyes of a beautiful girl,
And smiled when she smiled and looked away.
I'd called my mom some days before,
She had a story for every day she’d missed me.
We talked for hours,
We’d not talked in the length of a mortal coil.
To think,
That the flower I left you those many years ago,
In that book you kept beneath your pillow,
That little book into which I scribbled secrets from my heart,
Under that soft herringbone pillow into which you moaned secrets from your heart...
Was the last one I sniffed…
That eighty and four full moons ago,
The velvet sunset beneath a crimson sky,
Which all five brothers stopped and watched,
After putting the sixth to rest with his forefathers,
Pensive with the pain of loss,
And yet still mesmerised by the beauty we beheld
Was the last one I gazed at…
That procrastination had extended one busy week
To a lifetime without calling home.
And now, like the ghost of time lost,
Regret flickers through my tumultuous mind
Like a tempest, she overwhelms my every sensation.
The mere thought of blinking again,
Fills my heart with unease.
Will those I love,
Still be here to love me?
Will I still be here to love them,
When I finally open my eyes again…
If I do.
So I simply will not blink.
A lifetime cannot be too long, now can it?
Rujumba