Eleven

Light melted around the tyrannosaur.

Windows reflected 

the orange-ing sun, each of

them like close up headlights of

Jamal’s motorcycle.

And

Toby believed he remembered

the melting

sun light, sitting next to Anthony and Zain in

a dried up ravine.

Toby had listened to their –

layers and layers of

plans – what they would do

when they leave war behind.

Could not remember what he had planned for himself.

I believe in my fossil;

the erasing, rewriting

layers of carbon to date. 

How to plan decay! 

Time stuck to its planning!

In that vaporizing light of

evening

Toby believed in layers of doubts.

Shadows rose upward.

He heard his own voice

talking to Jamal’s cat.

“Seriously, how long must we stay in Afghanistan?”

His words, preserved like fossil, replaying

a voice.

Anthony was dead.

Toby believed – he could be telling that

all along throughout the day.

He can still

sit in that ravine

With Anthony and Zain in a belief.

Sunset behind the mound – a calcified fossil like sky.

Dried up light, could be preserved in plans-

waiting for

everything to end.

Sky could be planning to build the Stars.

Afghanistan was real last night in Toby’s sleep.

While he was

sitting in the dry ravine

all day and across the twilight.

Sitting with the sounds of

sky and floating clouds

forgetting momentarily

about the war,

about what he was up to,

and why he was even inside the ravine,

He believed in layers of dreams, before

he began to forget.

He forgot how to even

remember what he forgot!

“We forget, when we find

layers of absurdity.”

Toby held Anthony’s memories better than his own.

When they found Toby alive.

Toby wondered whether he had a

memory of the injury!

He did memorize the recovery!

Anthony used to dream, he was going to marry Lisa who

was a photograph in

and out of Anthony’s purse.

When Toby

lay on the stretcher

between sleep, wake and dreams

remembering – whatever he could.

All he could ask the nurse was –

“How will Anthony marry Lisa now?”

When

you recover a death, turn

into a fossil, it doesn’t matter whose memories

you inherit to haunt a dream.

Could be a memory of a Neolithic man

sitting by a fire pit – carving a spear-head.

How did he know how to perfect

that stone to bleed the mammoth?

Dreams do not matter any more to Toby –

“You either step in or step outside a dream.”

Toby did not know what his own dreams

used to be.

Layers of absurdity fog his reasoning.

Toby did not recall

why he held Anthony’s words in

layers of this fog.

He tries to make up some reason.

Zain had called months later.

Toby cannot remember what Zain was

talking about, did not focus on his words that day.

Tries to carve a story

on what Zain was talking…

Carved the tyrannosaur out of the shrub instead.

Toby wants to tell all about Anthony’s memories

of Lisa to the melting light, wasn’t sure

who Lisa was.

She was just a photograph, 

who used to be in

and out of Anthony’s pocket.

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