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I miss the euphony of birds at dusk’s soft kiss,
Their songs once crowned the Sun in fleeting bliss.
  Memory stirs — a street scene veiled in light,
  A bygone day reborn in twilight’s bite.

The winding road concluded at the tree’s embrace,
Where stood the Red Box, keeper of time’s trace.
  Forged by decree, a carmine sentinel still,
  Now fallen silent on the village hill.

In boyhood’s wanderings down that humble street,
I’d pause and wonder what secrets it might keep.
  I’d peer within when the Postman came to claim —
  Envelopes slipped like whispers with no name.

At dusk, that vision pierced me with its pain —
A relic ruined by wind and rust and rain.
  Creepers wound their wreaths around its frame,
  While lizards skittered, flies laid siege in vain.

One day, they’ll mark it — a relic of our place,
A story sealed in rust and creeping lace.
  Yet when I think of that red box grown old,
  A boy’s soft longing in my chest takes hold.

Time races on — we too shall find release,
And wish that Red Box might just rust in peace.
This poem is a quiet elegy for the ordinary relics of our childhood — a weathered post-box, a fading street, a bird’s forgotten song. In its rust and ruin, I find a memory that outlives time: a boy’s wonder sealed in carmine metal, left to dream beneath creeping vines. May these lines remind us that even the simplest corners of our past deserve a final resting place in the heart.
Megan Parson Sep 2018
I once robbed a post-box,
      & looked through letters, small & scented.
Of someone's aunt with chickenpox,
And bills handsome, from the rented.

Love letters, I had to read!
Which in boredom, my mind would feed.
Some which made my heart bleed,
An urge to send, a nervous need.

A good doctor's prescription pill,
& injections, with dread did me fill.
Thankfully illegible, so not my joy to ****.

But now, I must stop,
For reasons purely confidential.
As I catch the Postmans' beaming top,
His light bag filled only with what's essential!
A poem on a crazy idea....
Arihant Verma Jul 2016
Waiting for that paper, a light
A cursor that keeps blinking for the next word
Even when the screen arranges to sleep in daylight
Fingers begin to itch and start being febrile.

An email, such a pity,
is more accessible than
a post box.
All the handwriting fonts that I did try, couldn’t,
Just possibly couldn’t mirror the impeccable tries
To struggle to be parallel to the top
Or bottom of a page.

The improbability of what the next thought would be
The prediction  of where the addressee would smile
Or frown, or pick up eyes to stare at the wall for a while,
To embrace what had just been conveyed.

Letters are like light, they reach us later
From when they were born, but the spaces
they illuminate or burn on their arrival!
I wonder if our pupils shrink.

They more than just tag along, they tap in,
They’re the result of cleaning the ink from
the nib, a thousand times, over thousands
of sentences, or maybe just a few, but they do.

And don’t dare ask the pen for proof!
It’ll track down wrinkled pages
Who had their thirst quenched by
The swipes of fountain pens’ fountainheads,
And pictures of the fingers
Bathed in red, and black, and blue,
And occasionally of table clothes
Spilled over by the consequence of imperfect handles.

Imagine if light came as soon as it was made,
It would be difficult for our eyes to handle such bait
Sometimes, a pause is necessary,
Imagine a world without commas!

I’d like to peek into the writer’s letters,
Not to read, but to sense the shapes of emotions
And stretches of As and Ns, or the reach of commas
On the next line, and then, close my eyes
And shove my nose in it, to sniff hard
The paper and the blue smells,
And die doing so if it was eventual.
to a road of solitude:
how is it that you are
so much more welcoming
than the shell i am beckoned
to reside in?
my father always told me
to keep the windows open
when burning candles
otherwise i will inhale the wax
and it will coat my lungs,
turning me into a candle as well;
so i kept the glass shut
it's funny how the earth cups water,
rain carving bowls into dirt and grass,
caressing the currents;
tears of otherworldly lovers -
it flinches when coming in contact, rippling
and when i apologize,
i think it'll sound like water
draining from a tub,
forced into sewers
much like the back of my throat
let's bathe together -
steaming water gushing from a faucet
oxygen trapping itself in soapy bubbles;
yr beautiful body
clothes in suds as they drown in lavender,
i'll kiss them all off of you
it is 12 pm and i'm trying not to smudge
the makeup my eyes adorn -
or rather, the eyes the makeup adorn.

i remember when my father told me
i'd have his eyes; bedroom blue
i never realized that one day, it'd be
the last thing left of him.

the ink spilling onto this paper
is made from my dreariness;
photos' nectar seeping from printers,
never going to match his ****** scars perfectly,
his crooked nose once sought wear.

i'm never scared of when he returns home
because i dislike being scolded -
i seek his acceptance;

it's now quiet in my head.
my dad constantly tells me his time's running short - my mom would always dismiss it and say it was one of the many guilt trips he gave, but i'm not too sure.

— The End —