always light: a poem

when i was a child,

i wish i had caught the sun

looped it around with a cowboy's lasso

and pulled it

to the palm of hand

moulded it to pin size

and slipped it

inside my pocket

so that i would carry light;

never followed by a shadow,

always light
..

(me, aged 5)

.. 

From time to time, I remember very vivid memories from my childhood, especially when I lived in my hometown, Medan. They are brief, but they remain vigorously endless in my mind.

Sometimes I will remember how it felt to walk barefoot in the Medanese sun, almost still feel the sensation from the warmth of the ground, how blissfully carefree and untroubled I was. The uncomplicated way the air I breathed, seemed so much clearer, as if I breathed in clarity and cleansing. I remember that I always followed my parents around, especially the time my mother was sweeping the floor, and I had carelessly tread into the dirt she had collected.

When I came to walk in my own light, it felt easy to fall back into my shadow instead; breathe in the polluted air, and to not run barefoot and free. As the air could not be swept, all I ever seemed to do was tread, breathe out the same polluted air, adding to the surrounding warped contamination.

Those memories of light, will always replay and stay repentant; moulding a type of guilt you feel from losing something important. I often wonder, what it would have been like to have stayed and wandered in my own light.

That is something I am trying to teach myself, and learn again.