Paper Boats

The sky will fall apart framing wishes and in some rancid cities, winters will remain hidden because the autumnal winds will be too harsh to kiss. The people surviving will share long, deep breaths and broken lullabies that will end in open sentences with no ends whatsoever. The sky will grumble about its cracked surfaces to people and turn red when holding onto anger.

The street in my hometown will still be stuck to the summers of my childhood when it would feel the thud of children's feet, shouting some stereotypical sentences, they will regret later. The winds will be asking questions about the existence of their shadow while the people will be swallowing truths to get rid of one. People will equate anxiety to living and sorrow to survival for it would be too late to ask for a puff of happiness. There, above the skies, the ostracized homes of the dead won't be different anymore because the souls will be knowing, how to befool God. Children's colouring book will be painted black all over and the clouds will punish themselves by rubbing charcoal on their body.

There will be dead flowers and red leaves and people will only come out during rains, for it would wash away the sins from over the leaves. Silence will be a synonym to freedom and people will walk around with their pockets filled with hypocrisy. Then, when the world will collapse into an hourglass, with less than 24 hours in your hands to work on your guilt, you'll be blaming the protagonist for a while, before you'll be left with a blurred memory of the world you used to live in: dark clouds, paper boats, petrichor, samosa-chai, and peace.

You'll look for a box that read "Childhood" and find paper boats inside - ordinary yellow turned boats, flattened with the heavy hatred of your own ignorance, soft, reminding you of the days when you used to be the protagonist of your own will. When it will rain, you'll make paper boats and steer them carefully to the puddles before they washed out blood, leaves you alone. At that moment, you will, for the first time in a while, see the sky coming back together. Lullabies will have a tune and would end when they should, the sky will lose its anger and rain hard as if complaining about all these years of forced slavery that turned rainbows to charcoal and life to death.

And in that moment, when the rains will stop and your boats will still be flowing, winter will come out of its shell to kiss the Autumn, to say goodbye.