Poetry Feature: The Arithmetic of Ambition

I had imagined a life of digressions,

walls dense with unfinished colours,
margins crowded by unruly thoughts,
entire afternoons surrendered
to the slow extravagance of being alive.

I thought there would be time.

Time for coffee gone cold in porcelain cups,
for books opened at random,
for seasides and silences
and other forms of useful idleness.

Instead, the years acquired a velocity.

One morning,
everything seemed to require a narrative.

Every journey asked for documentation.
Every talent sought monetisation.
Every affection leaned toward performance.

Even longing became industrious.

And so we learned to curate ourselves—

filing the rough edges,
translating wonder into competence,
turning our names
into something searchable.

Strange, isn’t it,

how adulthood arrives not as a revelation
but as a series of quiet substitutions.

The painting becomes a presentation.
The notebook becomes a strategy.
The afternoon disappears entirely.

Nothing is taken.

It is simply exchanged.

A fair trade, perhaps.

Yet sometimes,
in the blue hour between exhaustion and sleep,

I catch sight of another life—

not better,
not nobler,

only less accounted for.

A life that escaped the arithmetic.

A life still lingering somewhere
beyond the ledger of ambition,

where the sea continues its ancient work,
unconcerned with visibility,

and the walls remain unpainted,
not from neglect,

but from the stubborn belief
that there is still time.