It is cold now and we are old now, but we’ll never be old enough
The sun is settling back behind the clouds, it will be gone before we’ve finished drinking those extra strong cups of coffee that we craved all day long
The coffee isn’t hot enough either. The sky will get dark soon, but we can’t stand the in-betweens
When it’s too soon to be dark yet too dark to be light but too light to be comforting
It’s not dark enough.
And somewhere in the not-enoughs, we realize that we’ve become creatures of habit, that we sought comforts in those and now, even that is not enough
We think back with a dull ache in our hearts (the ache isn’t powerful enough for remorse) about where we went wrong
And we search for answers
We hunt for them in the corners of the drawers that contain the junk that was not important enough to occupy a place of honour in the cupboards
And yet not worthless enough to be thrashed (even the junk is in a perpetual state of not-enoughness : it makes us smile, but not quite. Not enough)
We hope to track them down in the well-thumbed books that lie gathering dust in the shelves and for once, the stories they tell are not enough
Under the bed, behind the cobwebbed door
Inside our head, in the polished floor
We make a valiant effort, truly, we do
But it’s not enough
Is that life now, we wonder. Is this what it has come to?
Because if it is
Then we’re stuck for good
Because life as we know it, is not enough
There are too many questions
And there never will be enough answers.
So we lie there, listlessly on our beds, heads on pillows that aren’t soft enough, blankets that aren’t warm enough, looking up at walls that aren’t white enough, bordering on desperation for the answers we may never find, harping on the what ifs, wishing
That though it is cold now, and we are old now
maybe, just maybe, one day we will be old enough.

by Tanvi Deshmukh

Art – Sawani Chaudhary

August 2015.