The Recurring Fear

This is not my attempt at writing poetry, I don’t even know if it can be called one. But I wrote it today out of some whim.

The Recurring Fear

I descend down the creaking stairs;

To pick up my laundry from the buzzing dryer.

I hear a loud bang upstairs

My friend’s closed the door to trap me down here.

The lonely electric bulb above my head turns off

Of course not by itself the prankster commands up there

I wait till my eye adjusts to the darkness

And find a corner on the stairs to sit and wait

Slowly light flows down the stairs

And I see the prankster look down and stare

I look up and smile “What’s the idea?”

A defeated voice asks “Don’t you ever get scared?”

A shrug, a grin and I’m back to my chores.

A hundred students in a vast air-conditioned lab

A duster and a chalk in hand, facing them all

I hardly sweat nor shiver, with a voice loud and clear,

I explain the rules formulated by Dennis Ritchie.

As I grow up in an alien land

And learn things never heard before,

I stand behind the podium, with a microphone pinned to my collar.

The professors I have admired the most in the panel

Don’t cause me to blank out or pass out,

Nor do my PhD competitors freak me out

As I present what I learnt and found.

It’s a couple of hours after the middle of the night

I’m at my desk with no other living soul around

The messenger window flashes and blinks bright

It’s my roomie, “you should have come right home”

I smile and type, “Hey, I’m alright”!

Still not satisfied, “How do you do it, its a scary and depressing night”

As grateful as I am to have a caring mate,

It’s just a research lab for heaven’s sake

No soft mattresses and quilts here

To tempt laziness when I can’t afford it.

A group in high spirits and cheer

Walking home after a midnight submission.

A guy among the group stops and begs the rest to hear,

Attentive ears and a single voice breaking the silence

“You see the engraved stone below this tree here?”

Eyes Widened and heads nodded,

“It’s the name of the professor whose soul haunts that Hall there”

I only hear a “Hmph!!” and Oh! That’s from me

Seeing the amused me he says, “It’s true”

Then piercing into the night, a sharp scream,

It’s my friend being pushed to the tree.

Suppressing giggles I follow the path home.

Today is a fine day; I can see the sun shining

People around me say it’s warm and cozy, a rare feeling around here,

That’s the reason they are all smiling

The hollow of my palm is wet with sweat

Shouldn’t that mean it’s humid?

But I impulsively pull out the sweater sleeping in my backpack

And Slip it on; the wool relaxes the goose bumps

But doesn’t cease the shivering

I feel my forehead with the back of my hand,

To find it colder than normal, just as I expected it to be.

So I’m not sick with fever, I’ve felt this before

I know its fear, but why and for what reason.

It’s not fear of crowd or darkness

Neither fear of the dead nor loneliness

I taught myself to overcome all the known mundane fears

But of what form is this unidentified fear?

Which keeps recurring out of the blue…