The train is the one in a hurry tonight,
the houses stay rooted, politely upright.
Each window is a frame of a halted little play,
a kitchen, a curtain, a child with her clay.

They say it’s the world that rushes on by,
but the world never moves, it just watches the sky.
It’s us with our luggage of deadlines and schemes,
who blur into strangers, who vanish in dreams.

I envy the roofs that don’t learn to depart,
their bricks guard the stories I trade from my heart.
Their clocks tick in rhythms I’ll never obey,
while my hours get swallowed by miles of delay.

Yet part of me smiles at the trick of it all,
to envy a lamplight, a silhouette, a wall.
Perhaps we are meant to be briefly unmoored,
so the stillness of others feels doubly assured.

For what is a journey but proof we exist,
a shadow in motion, a name on a list?
And maybe the home I keep chasing in view,
is less in the houses, and more in me too.

- Neha Sharma