Hearth On A Highway

The last time you looked at me,

You were a tourist in the middle of a noisy market

Looking at colourful jewellery and natives,

And you felt the butterflies,

And you told yourself

That you want to live here,

My home,

And I thought you knew,

How things worked around here,

But that's where we were wrong,

You were a tourist

Wanting to become a resident

But you didnt know that I am not as pretty or convenient or colourful for residents.

Tourists feel cities in their hearts,

Glorious cities,

Beautiful and lively,

In their eyes,

That they forget to ask a dweller,

If it's actually as pretty,

And dwellers feel cities in their bones,

Draining them of energy,

Because cities and people are illusions for nomads,

And life for dwellers.

I look pretty from a distance,

And I can put up a show for a few days,

But once you visit the market everyday,

You see the colourful jewellery fading away

And the lives of their sellers can be counted against hot afternoons and despair,

You see,

All these huge cities are glorious in their entirety,

Yet so uncomfortable in their littleness because the little things in them like personal space keep shrinking and shrinking till there is only enough air to breathe and it still makes their dwellers feel grateful for what they have.

You see,

Darling,

Tourists carry only the beautiful parts of cities, the pretty parts,

The fancy ones,

The ones which cities are known for,

So people fall in love with them,

But forget to look for the littleness,

The discomfort,

The suffocation,

And the collective misery of the lack of belonging.

So when you came to look for me,

I told you,

These are the few parts that people know me for,

There are many others,

Hidden ones,

Ugly ones,

Ones that I haven't told people about,

Like a forgotten ruin,

A small waterfall,

Tiny roads,

Temples in the caves,

Fields of weeds,

So you tell me to stop and you ask me to tell me something permanent

And I tell you my name,

And you sit there in the heat,

And you ask me if you'll see my difficulties and ugliness more than the show that I put on,

And I nod,

So you take me to the field to plant a tree

And I after we plant the seeds,

I ask you why,

And you tell me,

With a crinkle in your eye,

That tourists offer roses,

Dwellers plant trees;

That travellers are pilgrims,

Some look for hope,

Some look for god,

Some look for a hearth,

And you are glad to have found one of them here.

- acceptance.