The cries of the cuckoos are mangled with the cacophony of the ugly native black birds.
There is an uneasiness in the ground as sequined white slippers tread softly on the clean roads of an officer’s colony.
There is a path that meanders out sans sprawling bungalows overflowing with potted plants.

it is a narrow path lined with dust laden trees. A few pieces of broken chalk lay scattered near the poor children’s scrawl. In a language she doesn’t understand.

She is but a trespassing guest.

There’s an emptiness you must fill in. Step right there. Fill the path, that goes nowhere, with your gaze. Stand right next to the scrawl.
It is near the child’s play you are missed the most.

In the hopscotch boxes faintly erased, a friend is needed. To hop together. Laugh over it all. To create a memory that remains as streaks of a smile .

But it isn’t a time to wait even if all stands here paused patiently. She walks slowly on the asphalt as it soaks in the late morning. Bends over and holds the piece of crude chalk. It feels like a clay ready to be molded, ready for its purpose.

She stares at the specks of blue inside the crumbling white. Her fingertips touch the protruding rounded edge. She leans over. The chalk lies two steps away after a momentary pause.

A bent figure straightens and adjusts the black shawl draped on the left shoulder. She walks back through the dusty path to the bougainvillea lined straight roads. She lifts open the metal gate and walks back into where she doesn’t belong.

It’s a game of pretense- we played house and pretended we belonged in the walls of pillows and roofs of freshly washed sheets.

We’re playing house a few leap years later. But it shall continue to stay alive just as well long after she has abandoned it.

And perhaps it is that. That chalked a name in the dust blown path. Two steps away from a lonely chalk.