City Lights and Insomniac Nights
written by: Samrudhi Dash
@samrudhi.dash
Silent chaos within
A tornado of emotions dances to an orchestra of memories
Pain, the lyrics
I lie beneath the sheets
Too exhausted to move
Too world-weary to keep my eyes open
Just pretending to be asleep
Trying to woo sleep
Though I know this won’t help, it never has
The city lights twinkle in the distance
Nostalgia plays jazz music
And tears dance to its tune
Drip dripping into the pillow
The speeding sound of luxury Limos
And the sirens of an ambulance
Crash through the silence
Cutting across the dance of emotions and nostalgia
A moment frozen in time
Comes alive
To slice through the gnawing pain
Neon filters flash weird shapes on the dance floor
As memories dance away in a psychedelic trance
The harsh glare of tube lights in the hospital,
Glinting off the stark white walls, the cold marble floors
Quickening steps of white-aproned figures, trained to urgency
Dance attendance before the heart monitor – beep beeping
A silence too claustrophobic
Memories coalesce as tears refuse to flow
Gathering at the corners of my eyes
The last drop forming a blot over my signature
The papers carry no meaning whatsoever
A funeral march plays
A fruitless attempt to quieten the deafening screams in my heart
The volume turns up
As the neon chaos grows wilder
Dancing away in a maddening frenzy
Glasses clink, chink, swirl, twirl
I wipe the haze from my seeing glasses
As the smoke spirals rise to kiss the sky – a starry night
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”
I open my eyes to the darkness
Seeing through the blinding pain
I still have an unfinished story to complete
For, the city is witness to the promises made
And so are you, an invisible presence in absence
Asleep, but not oblivious of the unslept, unsleeping
The case was never closed
That signature, the funeral march – mere perfunctory acts
No wonder, I can never woo sleep
The tornado returns, more violent than before
And my scribbles over paper dance to the orchestra of pain, the chorus of the effervescence of memories
For here I am,
An insomniac, trapped in the catacombs of time…
- City Lights and Insomniac Nights - July 17, 2022
- END IS BEGINNING - September 20, 2017
- IF ONLY LIFE WERE THAT EASY - August 23, 2017
