I can’t fit my struggle
in a sheet of paper.
I can’t voice it
in a single poem.
It’s a blur if I look at it.
An illusion, a shape-shifter.
And I sit here
That’s all it leaves me good for
Deciphering images on the couch of my therapist.
I can’t make it rhyme,
I can’t make it somehow feel fine.
A blur of hope and unmistakable drive,
crumbled into longing and regret,
guilt and strife.
Why so vague you may ask?
I don’t remember the triggers,
only the emotions
the ones that made a lasting imprint
on my mind
The newfound intensities of hatred and despair
I didn’t this body could contain
It did, it did
even when it swallowed me whole.
Filled to the brim,
and when it overflowed
it dissolved everything in its hold.
Even the broken dreams
that once unleashed them.
I can’t fit my struggle into a narrative
a series of events, echoing coherence
It was a scramble that bore no witnesses.
People only saw the worries
etching deeper and deeper in my face
And they remarked how much they missed the smile
that greeted them back in the day.
But I didn’t.
How could I?
when I couldn’t even recognize the person
that looked back at me in the mirror.
The scramble to make distant dreams a reality
echoed in the dearth of wealth and resources
amplified in the blank stares of others,
confusion stark in their sight.
The clocks turned time,
and a dreamer became a rebel,
when the society released a checklist,
and it didn’t return with my signature.
Through a strange turn of events,
I find my life piecing together
once again.
Not with hope, but with support.
The very society I renounced,
showed a different face
and it gave me the courage
to find the dreamer again.
The one that made life worth living for.
I no longer bear confusion,
when my eyes look back at the mirror.
But just because the sun shines,
doesn’t keep the clouds at bay.
The soil may be rock hard,
but it is still damp from inside.
Some sense is stitched together,
when a similar situation manifests
One that bears resemblance
to one in the midst of strife
to answer the question
‘Why did it have to be me
who went through it all?’
Familiar emotions arise,
and I greet them
for they no longer seem a stranger.
I recognize what they leave in its wake
and I take a note of what is at stake.
Now, should I relive my ghosts
to pen them down in prose?
I’m afraid I’ll have to,
or they will haunt me in nightmares
begging for my peace.
But I am afraid that
in stitching together my past,
my future may slip into the vast.
At last, for my struggle I must say,
it distorted my life.
Found a stranger in people I called mine.
But I found my way back,
or rather paved my way under strain,
or so goes the narrative.
But let’s see,
how long this might last.