hey, maybe i’m not indecisive. maybe i’m just expansive.

one day i want to be a scriptwriter, the next i want to make films, then i’m thinking about governance and diplomacy, then policy, then economics. it feels like too much sometimes — too many versions of a life, too many things i could become, and not enough time to become all of them.

but maybe it’s not a flaw to want widely. maybe it’s just what it means to be awake to the world.

i want to learn languages that no one speaks anymore. i want to crochet things that don’t have a purpose, and sculpt things that’ll only take up space. i want to pick up art again, spend less time on my phone, move my body more, play instead of scroll. i want to fill diaries with poems in hindi, not just english. i want to return to the violin, maybe even learn something new alongside it. i want to learn how to do my own makeup, just so i don’t have to depend on anyone else.

i want to stay close to people, but my social battery runs out too fast. i don’t always understand them, and they don’t understand me. i don’t trust easily, and i don’t try hard enough to. long-distance friendships feel like one-sided efforts, and i’m tired of being the only one reaching out.

i love my parents, but i don’t know how to be fully honest with them. if i tell them i’m sad, they’ll worry. if i tell them i’m happy, they’ll expect it to last. so i just… stay somewhere in between.

sometimes it feels like i don’t belong anywhere. like i don’t really have a home, just places i pass through.

and still, i want to love. i want to love so deeply it scares me. and maybe that’s the scariest part — knowing that at the end of the day, i will leave.

i’m only 17. i don’t know anything.

maybe that’s okay.

He hushed me down when I passed it– as though we’ve a secret.

The alley was dark, and the footpath wet,

When I asked him if we had ever met.

He smiled faintly, not lifting up his hat,

He said you’re not the first one to ask me that.

Amusement danced on his fingertips, as he lit the cig,

And then he bent down to grab a broken twig.

He bore his eyes onto it when he rubbed it against the wall,

Specks of fire emerged as he stood tall.

I met god in an alleyway, and he asked for a cigarette,

We’re both sitting on the pavement as he gazes into an amulet.

The amulet is a brilliant blue with specks of green,

The making of it- is no less than a dream.

He questioned if this looked familiar to me,

“I wondered if this is what Earth could be,”

God sighed, a sound old as the sea.

“Not quite,” he murmured, spinning the amulet slow,

“This is what it was, before they let it go.”

I met god in an alleyway, and he asked for a cigarette,

The cigarette burned low, like an ancient flame,

Its smoke curling like memories, never the same.

“I don’t get many believers these days,”

He said, his voice lost in a foggy haze.

“Just people who search for someone to blame,”

His words dropped heavy, without any shame.

I met god in an alleyway, and he asked for a cigarette,

I watched him, his face a portrait of sorrow,

Like a god with no faith in tomorrow.

“And what are you looking for?” I asked,

His silence spoke more than words ever tasked.

“Something worth saving,” he muttered, resigned,

Like hope had long since slipped from his mind.

I met god in an alleyway, and he asked for a cigarette,

We sat there, still, not a word to break,

Both of us lost, with no choice but to wait.

His eyes, they carried a galaxy’s pain,

Fading and hollow, too deep to explain.

I met god in an alleyway, and he asked for a cigarette,

Finally, he flicked the cigarette’s end,

Its ashes scattering like prayers to send.

He stood with a groan, his bones heavy with age,

The weight of eternity set in his gaze.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said with a sigh,

But his voice carried no hope, just goodbye.

I met god in an alleyway, and he asked for a cigarette,

And then he vanished, a shadow in the night,

Leaving me alone with the fading light.

And I stayed, with questions too vast to ask,

Wondering if even gods ever grow tired of their task.

At the beginning, I thought it was nothing. Eventually, it started caressing me even on days where there were no signs of wind. And then it started speaking to me. Softly, faintly– It would graze my face like the hand of a concerned mother. It would direct me to paths I didn’t know existed by gushing me towards it.

And strangely, I listened. Maybe because it was the only constant I had. Unlike walls that changed colour, or ceilings that sloped and straightened with every new address, the wind never needed introductions. It didn’t ask for proof of identity. It knew me. Even when I didn’t.

People often talk about home like it’s a person, or a place. They speak of warmth, childhood rooms, creaking doors that sing them to sleep. But I have never had that kind of luxury. My doors have always closed softly, politely — like strangers parting ways. My windows opened to unfamiliar skies, and my floors never remembered the shape of my feet long enough to miss them.

I’ve always imagined myself to be like a suitcase. To be filled with emotions, locked in, and taken away from one place to another. A vessel that carries stories it didn’t choose, but must hold anyway. People unzip me, put their expectations inside, and close me again without asking if I have space left. I never get to stay long enough for dust to gather on me, never get to belong to a single corner.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why the wind speaks to me. It doesn’t belong either, yet it belongs everywhere. It slips through cracks and keyholes, it rests on trees it has no roots in, it brushes past faces that never recognise it twice. But unlike me, the wind doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe it has learned the art of existing without owning.

I, on the other hand, ache for ownership. Not of property, not of walls or land, but of a place that remembers me. A door that sighs with relief when I walk through it. A window that has memorised the way I push it open. A floor that knows the weight of my footsteps as if they were a familiar song.

Until then, I’ll continue carrying myself like luggage —

sturdy on the outside, scattered within.

I have a house, many many houses, but no home.

But maybe… a home isn’t something you stumble upon. Maybe it’s something you build slowly, out of people and moments and fragments you refuse to let go of. Maybe it’s in the laugh of a friend that lingers after they’ve left, or in the pages of a book that always smells the same no matter where you open it.

Maybe home is not a door or a window, but the feeling of being remembered. And if no place has remembered me yet, then perhaps I’ll be the one to remember myself. I’ll be the keeper of my own belonging, the anchor I’ve been waiting for.

Because if the wind can exist everywhere and still be whole, then maybe I can, too.