I’ve never had it easy,
but I don’t say that on a note
of cloying self-pity, a shrill E6,
or in a way that makes my pain
superior to yours,
a sorrowed yet narcissistic boast.
It’s just that I’ve never had it easy,
even more so recently,
struggling to find viridescence
in a world that’s gray scale —
Sooty and ashen like something
straight out of a Victorian nightmare
with no promise of spring,
my mother’s sick, struggling
to walk, bogged down by
illnesses and fever.
My father loses
cognisance, forgetting that he’s
sitting at the dining table,
unable to pick up the spoon,
and recovering from a surgery,
I find myself at a loss for words —
The syllables engulfed by life’s
sorrows and swept away by
the undertow.
Years of battling depression,
breakdowns, and trying in vain
to suppress the absent-spirit
that anaesthetises my being
has made me resigned,
made me wonder why,
question the point of it all,
and today I wept for what
seemed like the first time in
a long time, wondering where
this lonely, sordid, potholed path leads,
I cried out, wondering if God hates
me, and though I didn’t experience
an epiphany like a million little
blue incandescent orbs encircling
me and flooding me with a lust for
life, I wondered whether this is
how God works sometimes,
speaking through His silence,
carrying us through broken heartedness
to some place that might or might
not be better, but is in accordance
with his plan, never leaving or
forsaking us though we see
no end to suffering in sight.
Maybe this is His way of making me
give up my world of make-believe
and grow despite the scars,
the hurt and the loneliness.
Friends forsake, and enemies condemn,
and in the end, nothing seems to
matter anymore, but perhaps at
that bleak place, that wintry crossroads,
we need to find the will to press on
to become who we are.
Photo by Daniele Colucci on Unsplash
Visit the post if you wish to leave a comment.
Ordinary Person 
Leave a Reply