I’m unbound. I’m ticking in the vacuumed jar
with sealed corners, top to bottom to all other sides,

looking into the greyish jungle, solid like steps of time.
I’m audible, only to myself; so, as time churns

waves crash around my head to remind me of
every second I take to think, to answer, to regurgitate

the thought of the one night that came before I realised—
and we were in a Savannah-themed kid’s park

just because we wanted to do something special & childish.
The images are still sharp & clear: the walls were graffitied with

memories of elephants & personality on the grassland: other than the lake
in the dead centre of the walls, sitting deep-blue and banal,

the disjointed strokes, the curly-haired reflections & outlines of kids,
the misspelt words—(“love” became “lave”, or

a tragic mistake)—all of them that seems so prudently calculated
(yet really wasn’t) disturbed the masterful artist

who’d always wanted that spontaneity. And, the more we stayed
the sharper the costs felt to me: what I have kept in me all these time,

locked not with keys but near-amorphous words & images
of a man wearing silver-studded suit & tie on an altar, looking

happy & smiling with the Gospels of Love spreading over his lips.
That inaudible image sounds the future inside my head, tries to

replicate the tolling bell in the background, and breeds
endless anxiety in my mind. The procession goes on; the man

never stopped for a second. All’s in silence.
All I can feel now is the recurring image of that savannah

so naive, yet so real, pretending itself a grey jungle
that knows I can’t quite see through it yet—

like a vicarious impulse I can’t quite bind myself onto yet.