Written by Ayush Banerjee
I’ve not been the easiest to deal with-
felt the scars on my skin with dreadful eyes
and never accepted the voice
which has accompanied me,
ever since.
Pity me not,
please,
for I’ve always been told
that mankind has only been
but fair to me
and it is I
who knows not
how to treat me.
I’ve not been the easiest to deal with-
been grateful enough
to the lesson they’ve always taught-
to admire every other tree around me
for the others will, always,
be a fit for every forest of the mind
but,
do accept my humble regret
towards my existence, diligently,
for I shall always be the inferior tree
residing in every forest
that’d once bred the air of equality,
preached by their kind.
Look upon my body
as I often do,
with dilemma in perception-
the stare that overwhelms with curiosity
yet, whispers its preassumed fears,
concealed as the facial judgment,
as if an unwanted man
on foreign soil.
I’ve not been the easiest to deal with –
sometimes been all
and mostly some
of what I’d been told to be,
yet,
I’m so much, it seems,
of their misguided dreams and ambitions,
that,
I’ve never really been me.
Monsters under the bed,
they crawl up my sleeves at night
and reach out to my mind seeking rest from life;
I struggle and grab the nearest pillow
for my ears bleed the pain
of the haunting echoes of the past
and the nerves bear shocks of agony
daunting their way to an eventual death,
a temporary anaesthesia
for the mind wants to dream forever,
but the skin accepts numbness-
alas! It could never be whole,
for its truest self.
I’ve not been the easiest to deal with
for I am always expected to be knowledgeable
as the endless sea,
yet,
here I stand
as the broken plank of wood
afraid to float in the waters
where you rinse and bathe
and in the name of the Holy,
bury the spirit and innocence
of another, somebody, like me.
How many mirrors will it take
for me to be a human?
The mirror, too, lies sometimes;
an uncanny peace,
it offers to the deception of who I am,
as I am and
how I am,
for every step into the open,
the image that I bear
is like meat to your opinionated mind
as you preach that mankind is humble
and blooms like a flower on its own,
yet it is you,
who decides
which flower shall survive.
I’ve not been the easiest to me
for lost I am,
in a crowd of pleasers
that you’ve nurtured all along,
trying to be everyone,
forgiving the bygones-
a perpetual meltdown,
amidst all,
I am forgetting myself.
