I wonder what happens

To the poorly drawn images

We keep abreast as children,

Sheltered inside our notebooks and their crinkly pages.

I envisage those pages accompanying

Balloons, bubbles and butterflies,

And the colors in them adorning

The sallow face of the sky.

I like to believe that my poorly chalked out blades of grass

Somehow appended the greenery on earth

Or that my facetious funky human arms

Were causes of someone's delicate mirth.

I saw life in those two-dimensional stick figures, 

And in the houses, the trees, the sunrays 

I drew and splattered with a gamut of colors.

And I think I'm still searching for them today-

The life that I found in my inanimate objects, supple and spry;

The verve that oozed out of my pigments;

The faint crinkles which appeared around my parents' eyes

Each time I presented my godawful illustrations.

Perhaps I outgrew them as I grew up,

Or perhaps they outgrew me.

Perhaps my silver-plated stars and gilt suns

Thought it was the best to flee.

Even if my pictures reside

At the bottom of the foulest trash pile,

I'd like to believe otherwise.

I'd like to picture them right by my side,

Or hovering above balloons, bubbles and butterflies,

'Cause that's where they ought to be. 

Flying past free minds,

Humming their dulcet melodies.

 

Photograph: Sven Brandsma, Unsplash

 

Shifa