Recalibrating the Self: A Meditation by Snigdha Agrawal

 

 Iván Cisneros 

Recalibrating the Self: A Meditation

When the sun drops its bright curtain
and withdraws from the stage
It does not disappear
It entrusts the horizon,
with the memory of light.

Radiance thins into ash-rose restraint;
warmth gathers inward;
and darkness studies a new grammar of being
Nothing is lost
Only translated

So too with aging
It is not erosion
But revision
A slower syntax of breath.
A deliberate editing
of excess.

The eyes learn economy
The body consults its limits,
and calls them teachers
Ambition loosens its grip
Urgency retires from command
What remains is ember
No more a spectacle,
but sustained fire.

There is dignity in this recalibration:
to step aside from the center
without feeling displaced;
to release the addiction to motion;
to choose presence over pursuit;
to remain useful
without petitioning for relevance.

Survival, then,
is not defiance against dimming
but intimacy with it.
No more seeking applause
But alignment.
A quiet coherence with one’s own season.

The day concludes
without apology.
The sky relinquishes brightness
without shame.

And I,
learning from its descent,
accept that becoming less visible
is not becoming less.

It is retiring into the green room
where make-up doesn’t help,
but understands itself.

© Snigdha Agrawal

Snigdha Agrawal

Snigdha Agrawal (née Banerjee) holds an MBA in Marketing and has over two decades of corporate experience. She enjoys writing in all genres, including poetry, prose, short stories, and travel diaries.  Educated in Loreto Institutions, run by the Irish Nuns, and brought up in a cosmopolitan environment, she has learned the best of the East and West. She is a published author of four books.  Her works have appeared in several anthologies and e-journals, published in India and overseas. She has recently been nominated for the 2024 Pushcart Prize in poetry.

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