A Small World

It was home after school
Those four odd shops I visited
and a temple once in a while
That was my world.
Big enough for the small me.
And as expected, I grew up
into a different child
spanning the wings of my mind
to unknown boundaries.
And often, I take these
nostalgic routes to fantasy
and dream of the lost world.
One that is more beautiful than
the reality it's set in.
An image of the then dull phase.

Tell me, what is beauty if it is not short lived?
The ambiguity, that it might not survive
or I would not survive the onslaught of time
gives a chance to go over and
capture whatever I can.
And this is a continuous process
as I am being erased from a side
like a blackboard
after the lessons are learnt.

(Weak imitation/inspiration derived from Wislawa Syzmborska's "The Joy of Writing")