In the Jar of Lost Things

By Minahil Mehr

“For my grade 11 psychology teacher. Thank you for enlightening me that there is no shame is being lost, for showing me that the beauty of lost things is that they can be found, and for guiding me that lost things are the most unique because they are the most rare”

I drifted in the breeze,

In my life I never knew ease.

Like a wrong puzzle piece that just didn’t fit,

I was never understood, not one bit.

They say it’s the beauty of lost things that they can be found,

But I was lost and never again knew my place on Mother Earth’s ground.

I lived in wishful thinking, delusions of my own,

And from the smallest breeze the pieces of me were blown.

I passed through many a land, and none were that which I could call home or where I could peacefully rest, 

My heart’s compass could neither point north or south, nor east nor west.

Many a time I hoped for change,

From this journey of life which is ever so strange.

I did not find friendship, nor love nor hope,

I looked through the thick lens of self-validation but failed to look down beneath my feet at the sharp slippery slope.

And so I fell into the abyss, and I fell for a time span so long,

How can one person suffer so much, it is just so unfair and unjust and wrong.

But even in the darkness the light of my life found its way,

And from my misery and suffering carried my so far away.

I lived in the world of love and strength and diamond rings,

At last I had found my place outside of the world’s jar of lost things.