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Writer's pictureAishwarya Jayal

The Landscape of Escape

I’ve spent my entire life escaping regrets.


I’ve set up booby traps

For regret rats.

Caught whopping huge ones,

Some real cun*s,

And then some.


I could figure out

Where spiders would make their cobwebs

Just by watching them peg

The first thread

In a vertical line

That soon was a knocked-up, albeit fine,

Spiral.


I could see the uncreased skin

Under the eyes of a laughing Kim.

I could measure the distance

Between what was said and meant,

Stroll between their thoughts and words

And smell the unpalatable truth's undigested turds.


I could hear the rising dissent

In fervent voices chanting submissive consent.

I could spot lies,

The guiltless, spotted, butterflies,

In a sky of questionable blue and white -

That they drained and cleared up after every fight.


I could pick out the minesweeper's mines,

Write novels about what lurked between their lines.

I could catch rolling eyes -

The spiraling ambush of foul cries.

The twisted smiles and pursed lips -

poised to strike with their middle finger-flips.


I could see that what I saw

Wasn't what was.

And what I didn't see,

Would actually be.

And I escaped.


I ran pillar to post,

Burning even those letters that I loved most.

I carried the scent of doubt,

To fertile lands which turned barren in drought.

I erased my tracks lest I be tracked down

By screaming silences and smiling frowns.


Today,

Alone in the fortress of my mind,

Attached to none, cruel or kind

I wonder why still I feel this strife?

Did I succeed,

Or did I yet just escape life?


Image Courtesy: Aishwarya x DallE (in the style of an impressionist who used only black and white in the renaissance era).


That which you seek to escape, you will only carry further.


Escape shares its core with fear. And fear is seldom, if ever, is free of illusions. Illusions birth delusions. Delusions change reality. Reality, can seldom be questioned by the one who creates it. Creation begets attachment which begets judgement which begets fear. Escape shares its core with fear.


This prose explores the journey of escape and its bittersweet end in hopes that we examine our own journeys with escape and the possibilities of a life beyond.

Happy Sunday!

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