A few thoughts—like wild dogs—run,
Snarling, sprinting, none in unison.
One walks wrapped in quiet reckoning,
Another leaps from the shadows—unannounced.
Serious faces in the gathering of silent aches,
While jesters sneak in, stealing peace.
He walks—a slow tide at sundown,
Breeze in chest, no ripple in sight.
But beneath—magma hums lullaby,
Cradling fury like a sleeping child.
Cool eyes, volcanic veins,
A storm rehearsing in a candle’s calm.
Family—his driftwood and his anchor.
The balm and the blister.
They lull him with laughter,
Then jolt him with a sigh too long,
A silence too sharp.
And yet—
There is a place.
Not drawn on maps or etched in stone.
Where scattered thoughts find their rest.
Where the mind exhales what it held too long.
There—he folds into himself,
A silent hymn of peace.
Not even or odd.
Just still.
Just enough.
...
But the world claws back—
A phone buzz, a sigh across the hall,
The clink of plates, a missed stare,
Little things—
Each one a thread in the tapestry of turmoil.
He smiles. Sometimes wide. Sometimes just enough
To not break.
His voice—a riverbed in drought,
Holding the shape of past floods.
The night asks questions.
Why do shoulders carry what the soul can’t name?
Why does love sometimes bruise,
Even when it’s trying to heal?
Yet still—he finds it.
That sacred place.
Maybe it’s a song only he hears,
A far away place deep in nature, unknown
Or perhaps, it’s just the breath
Between two thoughts—
Where nothing aches, and nothing burns.
Here—
Even the chaos kneels.
The fire sleeps under wet earth.
And the day, whether odd or even,
Slows…
To a whisper.
Susanta Pattnayak
