A wet walk

It is very recently

That I was introduced

To the pleasures of

Walking in the rain

If it can be called pleasure

Not the warm, sprinkly,

Romantic, Bollywood kind

But the grim, wet, cold kind

That leads you

Into yourself

I imagine going off

Under an umbrella

Getting slightly wet

Ruminating, imploding

Thoughts becoming

More and more dense

In the limitation, suffocation

Imposed by isolation

Wisps forming into threads

And threads weaving into braids

Or forming tapesteries

Showing me 

Strange new patterns

Unprecedented and unseen

Beautiful and unexpected 

Sights that would 

Never have appeared

Without that specific moment

And which will always

Stay with you 

The rarity of their discovery

Startling you evermore

And I think of

How late I discovered

All this

And how little time 

I have left now

To explore it

Just thirty years, maybe

So little, so little

It makes me brace up

And learn to treat

Every occasion

With the intensity

Deserving

Of its rarity 

Moulting

Sometimes,

I think of the things

I worried so much about

Clenching my teeth

Not sleeping

Getting myself in a royal funk

And wonder

Why I bothered

It's so light

Without the burdens

The eye

When the hurricane

That is regular life

Threatens to pull me

In a thousand different directions

I am trying to remind myself

That

The center of the hurricane

The eye around which

The storm revolves

At break-neck speed

Is perfectly still

It is difficult to remember

Every time

But

You must keep it together,

Woman

What is healing

But the acceptance

That you will always hurt

Everything

Is happening in your mind 

To see the world

Complacent in the inertia

Of your life

You take a step outside

Spend a day

In a completely alien environment

See life at a right angle to yours

Contemplate

Ruminate

Have epiphanies

The ripples of which

Last your lifetime

And even years later

When you look back

The day shines like a gem

In a string of mundane

Nondescript days

Still sloughing off

Meaning after meaning

And you realize

What it means

To step outside

Of your comfort zone

And start doing it more

Until

You spend

So many years

On the road

That that becomes your life

And you have nothing

To go back

No complacence

No such thing

As the regular

The average or the base

What is the balance?

Downhill

Everything looked well

And she had

All the comforts

She could have asked her

Only that her dreams

Were only of

Walking

Spiralling

Sliding

Falling