Stranger

A stranger stares at me

Whenever I look at the mirror

A school girl with two pigtails

A college goer

A trekker

A writer

Stranger takes many forms

All forms seem

Like a figment of imagination

The mirror itself has gone missing

The images are stuck in my head

My self tries to time travel

I climb the hills

But I go out of breath

The pigtails are gone too

A writer perhaps still thrives

Who will keep record

Of all these strangers?

They grew up with me

And then abandoned me

Or maybe I abandoned them

It’s not just them or me

The world has become a stranger too

Victims have turned perpetrators

Little children no longer grow old

To stare at the mirror

To remember their many strange selves

As we go further to discover

Ever expanding edges of the Universe

We seem to be collapsing

Just like those stars running out of hydrogen

We are made of star dust after all

Stars taught us to go nuclear perhaps

Just like a habitat with prey and predators

We continue to live in a concrete jungle

Though roles get reversed in every epoch

Predators become prey

Hunted turn into hunters

How long will it take for us

To be humans?

Mirror has no answers

My many selves and versions

Collapse into one too

The one that is trapped

Behind the mirror or screen perhaps

A virtual self…a stranger

Stares back at me!!