Chitra Arun Poet Free verse

At 3 AM, Somewhere between dawn and dusk

At 3 a.m.,
before the birds have begun singing,
before a single wing crosses the sky,
I wake.

Not from sleep,
but from another dream
that leaves my heart racing
and my thoughts scattered
like fallen leaves after a storm.

Around me,
life moves forward as it should.
Children grow into lives of their own.
Loved ones find new roads to walk.
The world keeps asking for change,
while some part of me
still reaches for what was.

Perhaps that is why
so many women lie awake at this hour,
struggling to find the words,
struggling to quiet the demons within,
wondering when exactly they began grieving
for a version of themselves
that is still here,
yet no longer the same.

The body burns,
then shivers.
One moment I am throwing off the blanket,
the next I am pulling it back around me.
Sleep becoming a stranger.

The mirror tells quiet truths.
And every season seems determined
to teach the same lesson. 
Nothing stays.

It feels like the withering
of a fruit-bearing tree.
A tree that may never bear fruit again,
yet still tries to give shade to many.
For years,
its branches bent under the weight
of all it gave away, 
love,
care,
comfort,
strength,
life itself.

Then one day,
almost without warning,
the harvest grows lighter.
The blossoms arrive less often.

And the tree stands there,
wondering if its purpose
has quietly left with the seasons.

But perhaps
the tree was never becoming less.
Perhaps
it was becoming something else.

For even when it bears no fruit,
it still offers shade.
Birds still rest on its branches.
The weary still gather beneath it.
The lost still find shelter there.

Maybe that is the hardest
and most beautiful truth
of a woman’s becoming.

To continue loving,
even when the world has stopped asking
for what she once gave so freely.
To continue giving
when no one notices.
To continue standing
through the long dark before dawn.

And so at five a.m.,
while the sky is still undecided
somewhere between dawn and dusk
I place my hand
upon my restless heart
and wonder,
whether this ache
is not the end of flowering,
but the slow, 
quiet transformation
of fruit into shade.

©Chitra Arun

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