Lost Letters

Lost,

Once kept in a locked box,

Now, lost

Funny how life works

Or is it?

Funny, i mean

Life works this way I know

But is it funny?

No one answers

Assumes it to be rhetoric

But what if it's not

What if I want to know

I want to know

Whether the way I've dealt with life till now

Can be considered funny or not

Because I want to be either funny or not funny

Not the one in-between

No half-laughs, no pity laughs, no huhs and hahs

So yeah, life

Funny or not, you decide

Memories however are never as funny as you think they are going to be

Sometime they are funnier

And sometime not funny at all

But never the way you think it's gonna be

Letters, past letters especially, are like that

The covers are more read and cherished than the actual letters

Once the person is no more in life, the meaning of words change

Thanks to the ambiguous properties of language, the pain can be turned into stuff to laugh on, and vice versa

Don't know if either of the situations is good

But letters once lost take away a part of your life (funny or unfunny) with them

The memories are treacherous things, that's why we have memorabilia

One look and everything comes crashing down the skull, forcing either a smile or tear out of you

What doesn't come is the amount of funny-ness you thought was associated with the memory

It is always a little too less or little too much

Never the exact same amount.

.

Raj Nandani

1st April 2023