Looking at an Old Group Photo

(Photograph for illustration purpose only)

She takes out a group photo
Frozen by the flash of future

And smiles forced out by a command

They stand in a row like specimen dolls

From a vast land of imagination

A group photo is like a zoo

Of different species of animals

Yet to show the full potential of their genes;

Now they are feathered, puffed up and plump

Unseasoned by innocence

Innocence?, each one in the picture

Sends out a mocking smile

Animating themselves in a surreal turn

Can’t you see the exuding hopes

And the deepening pain in our eyes?

Decades long weathering would

Make some shine like gems

And some remain coal till

The miner called Time digs them up

From the innards of dark despair

An old group photograph is a chamber of

Uncertain possibilities; disparate desires,

A jumble of nicknames, poems and glances

Hark well, you could hear sighs and

The kisses that never left the lips

Time does not photoshop the features

Fame does not airbrush the roughness

Success does not add a pride on those cheeks

Till these animals come back one day

To defrost their wild memories, now matured and cold

Before her and my eyes, they leave one by one

From the frame of our conversations of past

And we remain, two people suddenly distanced by

The emptiness left by the young animals;

A huge wasteland of absent and forgotten people.