"ready?"
"yes. bye, love you."
"have a good day."
i love riding on the bts
in the morning-time.
trains gliding past
just-awaking citizens
in their multi-complex
apartments and
street-side homes,
where if the windows
were to open i'd smell
the scent of fresh goods,
of fruits and smoky meat
(which i'd avoid at all cost)
and vendors just starting
their day's worth of earnings.
yellow seats lining trains
and seats occupied in
alternating sequences,
window-side all around
like a plane -
window panes reflecting
hazy morning fog
and transcending whispers
of dim sunlight through
Bangkok's encapsulating smog.
i make my way
half-dazed, west to east,
catching near-missed trains
and leaving floorspace for
incoming passengers.
bang wa to siam
and change my line,
onwards to on nut and
towards school-time.
early morning rises and
half-cupped coffees
(as coffee is addictive
so i am half an addict),
making my way half-asleep
through my daily routines.
semi expectant for
something spectacular
to happen:
people breaking out
to dance
or sing
or laugh in
marvellous expressions of
genuine happiness
as confusion and
suppressed smiles
paint our masked faces.
but no -
everything is normal,
authenticated.
wake up eat get dressed
get to school get stressed-
because life waits for nobody
and i'm just an
infinitesimal body
in a sea of
distinctive bodies
making their way through life
every. single. day.
left half-satisfied,
half-happy,
half-scared
of what awaits on the
other side
of this seemingly
rhythmic existence
that so defines me.
alas, we persist
in the
normalcies
of our strange
familiarities -
in our peculiar
beauty of simply
existing.
here comes my station now.
time to get moving and
forget my half-hearted fantasies
as I continue to exist
with nothing but dreams
without basis-
only disrupted internal wishes
that form part of my
normal - daily - routines.
By Shruti Dubey
1st Place Poem of TYE x Your Words Matter To Us Competition
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