Stairs of Life
Photo: Angad B. Sodhi
You ever walk up a flight of concrete stairs
and wonder who poured the cement?
How long until it starts to crack?
And how many winters can it survive
until the cement needs to be ripped out
and new steps need to be created?
At the top of the stairs there’s a sign.
with office numbers. Eleven and twelve
and one and two and three.
A person passes you with a lemon in their hand.
I see not eleven, but two sticks standing.
I see a yellow, oval object,
First a sapling, barely making it through its first year.
The woman tending the citrus plant was kind enough
to ensure its life continued, and there, walking near you,
was its offering.
I see beautiful life.
I find it more and more difficult
to talk with people
who simply see stairs.
***
Shubham Pal is an IT Analyst at an MNC in Bangalore who also talks about football, entertainment, TV series and being a millennial in the World Wide Web. He's a pop-culture aficionado, sofa-athlete, earphones abuser, movie go-er, and a pseudo-funny person. He writes speculative fictions, non-fictions, poems, tech newsletters and anything and more. His articles have been published in The Telegraph and The Shillong Times. You can find him on Twitter: @sweatyshirt or Instagram: @shubhamishahn.
