Paper Boat

I was six,

when I made a paper boat

with the broken wings of

a preprint newspaper,

that was bearing

a thousand unspoken words

in an agonised italicized print.

Some of the words were deaf by birth,

Crying out from the restrained throat,

fading away from the splintered pinion.

Some flew away,

while I was fashioning

the paper boat of imprinted assorted words.

I was fourteen,

when I made it float

on a rainy day, in a nearby brook

where peril pebbles were marking time

for the comer, free of sin.

With an apprehension of a novice,

it floated and glided and then hovered

at a place where a nugget wrangled

with the loony rain drops.

I had to go home then,

leaving the paper boat forlorn,

run away from the sternness of weather,

getaway to my comfy asylum.

Today,

I am twenty one,

to see the still stuck paper boat

in a corner of the sluggish, timid brook.

Many of the words sank down

to the depths of evocation

for no one to forage the hazy gist.

Not sunk, not eluded,

the paper boat still lay in hope,

for a sail so facile, so far.

A puff of wind blew out hope,

that swung on the bow back and forth,

reminiscing all my undone goals,

awaiting for a sail so hard, so close.

Image Credits: Unsplash @Mltodru Ghosh