Roshan Ali - memories

How do memories come back?

They travel more than us, through lands lit only by a moon.

Through tunes that ride them till they reach one's tears.

Do we even see what they mean?

Are they only ours?

I can tear through my heart, combing out the ones that mean tears,

And ones that mean nothing.

Thoughts of long stretches of sand where the footprints follow no human pattern.

These long stretches follow no particular pattern.

They stretch across my forehead.

The morning that I fled was colour-coded,

With the bright being home, behind me, and the dark in front, being dark.

Fleeing the bright orange of home, into the dark.

Feet flowing like the sand, scalding the surface upon which they stood.

Home- with the bright orange and the scalding memories of intense times.

Times that have been branded into my life, only to be brought out, to be exposed,

To be shown at the time of judgement.

At times where I stand to be judged- but there are no judges, only I.

And to look at myself in the reflections in the sand, seeing no face,

Or recognizable form.

Only to see a little product of failed efforts.

They come back clear, branded into thought,

the smell and the talk and the

the shapes that mean so much, that define the shapes of your life.

They fly back, into the very air that you breathe, and swallow

like life-giving food.

You are your memories.

You are what we call thoughts from a distant past.