In this episode we’ll hear Nupur Josi read her heart felt poem titled, The Accident. The poem is also part of the Written Tales Chapbook 2 collection.
I was eight years old
in the middle of a beautiful summer night.
After a dreary winter,
when the whole world was slowly
springing back to life,
I saw a young man almost die.
That night I was out for an ice cream cone,
holding my father’s hand
skipping excitedly on an uneven tarmac road.
My world up until then
had only been about cartoons, fairy tales
and unicorns.
My biggest dilemma that night
was having to choose between the many flavors
of an ice cream cone.
But it all changed
the moment I heard the loud crash
and that gut wrenching cry,
and just like that at the tender age of eight,
I learnt about human mortality
and the fleeting nature of life…
He lay there,
in a pool of his own blood,
the glass shards from his motorcycle helmet
sprinkled all over him like magic fairy dust
Against the grim darkness of the night,
the little pieces of glass glittered
like stars fallen from the sky,
making it hard for me
to not appreciate the morbid beauty
in that tragic site.
Soon, an ambulance was called.
And as they peeled him off
the now crimson road,
his body trembled,
swinging like a broken pendulum
dangerously between death and life.
By now my father had pulled me away
from the accident site
but he didn’t know, with me,
something had forever changed inside.
I don’t remember which flavor of ice cream
we finally got,
but I do remember laying in my bed that night
picturing the moment right before he crashed
and wondering what must have run through his mind.
Did the pain numb out all his fears,
or was he afraid as life flashed before his eyes?
In those quiet moments
between the painful gasps for air,
did he make peace with the fact
that tomorrow he may not be alive…
The next morning
going to school, I stopped by the accident site.
The blood was now gone
and the world around
had moved on with life.
It seemed to me
the sun had only risen that morning
to swallow up the tragedy of the night,
but then a few pieces of glass caught my eye
and I wondered again
did the man live or did he die…
It took me many more summer days
and summer nights
to stop playing the accident
again and again in my mind.
Now that I am a grown woman,
death doesn’t surprise or scare me anymore,
for I see it as a continuation of our lives,
but today as I sit here and write,
I can’t help but wonder
If that young man ever survived
that beautiful summer night...
Nupur is a poet, writer and filmmaker living in India. You can listen to more of her on on her youtube channel, Nupur Joshi.
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