Traversing the terrain of twenty something, I’m lost
And I see life blooming in quiet shades of lilac.
I see pink, I see purple, I see grey and blue
Each colour a truth that was long overdue.
Lilac - neither strong nor weak,
neither failing nor at the peak.
Neither too soft nor too heavy,
Neither sad lone, nor in a bevy.
Like the pink skies full of love and care
But also like the blue skies, dry and bare.
Like the shimmer between dusk and darkness
Like the mauve pause - calm yet restless.
Like a bridge between the land and the sky
Like a soft hello and a heavy goodbye.
Like years of hardwork ending in despair,
Yet finding tiny victories floating in the air.
Like the subtle beauty of in-between,
the grace of the storm and its stillness unseen.
Maybe there too is peace within this impasse
I’ve landed at, and for long, been meaning to surpass.
For I’m stuck in my own little land
By choices I made, but cannot understand.
Maybe I built these walls and called it fate
Cried and cried and thought it was too late.
And in that hush I’ve come undone
Facing the mess I had tried to outrun.
How was I so zoomed in, on each small line
Measuring each step, each effort, each sign.
Like with every twenty something year
Am I turning older, wiser and clever?
Or just running out of time, like my deepest fear?
Because like the best of things I know, lilac doesn’t last forever.
But, hard work doesn’t promise victory or loss.
You sometimes instead find paths you’d never cross.
Because lilac too isn’t a single colour, it’s a palette wide
Where some shades shine bright and some just hide.
See even in stillness there’s so much to lose
Or, gain, if I let myself choose.
So, it’s never too late to find “the” hue,
or choose a new shade, that’s true to you.
I saw the pink that faded into the blue sky
that then turned lilac, and dared to ask why.
Like a swatch of peach on tender blue skies
And like your smile at our tiny good-byes.
There’s grace and beauty hidden in this pause
I may wander, but I’ll honour the cause.
And I’ll carry it, like lilac, in folds of my heart
The quiet, the chaos and all the unspoken parts.