NO ERASURE

NO ERASURE
Goldwynn D. Navarro

There are certain points in our life that we are made to agree that moving forward with eyes impassionate is rather better than skimming back to the past, especially when nothing in the before-memorabilia is worth remembering at all.
We take a long stare on the unfilled test paper before us. Staring sternly. Staring blatantly. Unaware of the pounds of perspiration profusely leaking from our pores. Shaking hands. Shaking. We gather all the courage left in us and then finally, feeling the streak of friction igniting between our pen and test booklet. Slowly at first, then smoothly. We are going fast. Thank God we have somehow reviewed the lessons, that answering was beyond the question of failure. You stand up as if the next supermodel in Hollywood when all the audience can testify is “Holy Wood!” the moment your professor dismissed the class with a P.S.: “Have you read the instructions carefully class? Erasures, considered negative.”
Frosty arctic monsoons wipe your forehead to metal. Your ego corroded with sulfuric emotions and rust. The glimmer on your muttonchops grin, decay to a bite. We find an escape.
As Paulo Coelho imparts, “We make a lot of detours but always end up in the same destination…” We make a lot of side bends and lopsided breaks just like in the middle of a traffic jam, but still in us, we are aware where we are exactly destined: too take a cup of coffee and sigh, to warm-up and to have a cuddly slumber.
“Home…” Where is home?
The roads, pavements and slums collectively, we trek every day are mere man-made commodities, reluctant in themselves of what direction they really are served to lead. It is the lone man who decides which road seems to be less travelled that would make pacing an ease to the thighs, and it is the superior him who knows where his heart resides.
Home… Just like old school days when little kids enthrallingly drove their bicycles on a diffused, clement morn to their respective classrooms. Home… Just like a newly-tendered lawn so fine to sprawl onto with its awns frolicsome with our skin. Home… beyond infinity and further towards the blue skies, a million miles away from the hectic streets of the urban suburban, a smoke-freed zone, and the illumination of a weary soul.
Home…
It is where we try to redeem ourselves after the tedious evenings we have laboriously and vexingly finish our plates up to the last call, with an examination waiting for us the next day. For the last hour, we haphazardly scan our notes hoping that we could save some mental tidbits of the topics included. There was a need to weed a nerve.
Home…after a day’s test, that we thought we were able to pass, another spirit-challenge solved, we sat on a couch and munch corn kernels. We forgot to read the instruction – “NO ERASURE” in bold and capital letters.