Kept.

In an old notebook

I see, pasted childhood

cut in squares

She would jump out of the window

on a pile of collected old leaves.

There she would sit and read her fairy tales book.

The notebook now smells of kept mud

of memories that don't have endings

of time, that wears no stamp.

She would extend the stories in the book

and bring them to herself

under that window, she would greet the characters

she read

These squares look to be colored with paints and innocence

They must have had a story each when they were pasted

Now they have conclusions,

under layers of dust.

She would stay there till late

till the sky would change shades and force her outside the book

into deep imaginations.

She each day pasted a square in her notebook, painted it in the color of her day.

Today, each of these squares are windows

I would jump from, into a pile of old collected leaves.

Into faintly different moments, but amongst the same leaves.

-Shringi

September 10, 2011