By-Sudharma Dwadasi
It's become a routine now, waking up next to a new face every now and then. I know every bit of their skin but nothing about them. I can feel their warm skin against mine, but I barely feel warm inside. We've managed to become a society of hollows.
I wake up to a new face and warm skin. I pour myself a drink like I'm happy, but am I even close? I long the feeling of having someone hold on to me, if you know what I mean. Because with every passing breath, I'm falling apart. The more bodies I touch, the lonelier I feel. There's darkness around us. We've managed to go that far.
The faces still keep changing, and I'm fine with that, because I've been craving being held for so long that it doesn't matter even if it's just for a little while anymore. So little, that it all gets lost and becomes insignificant in the larger scheme of things. But I still take it, because it's better than nothing.
So far we've come, as a society, that being surrounded and yet being lonely has become the common. Where are the days when I could walk up to someone in a bookstore and talk to them about the book they have in their hand? Where are the days where I could find new friends in a coffee shop over our mutual love for coffee? Where are those days why I meant something other than I wanna get into your pants. when I struck up conversations with strangers at a bar? Where are those days why people actually spoke to more humans?
We've come so far, a bit too far, I believe. I'm lost in this world where waking up naked next to a stranger is a bigger accomplishment than to have started a new bond. Where we're so scared of things failing or birthing us that we don't even try. Where we blindly follow trends because that makes us cool. Where being cool is more important than being happy. Where what others think is more important than what you're comfortable with.
I could take a stand if I wanted to, but that'll only make me lonely as that's not supposed to be cool.
Hold me for tonight then, stranger. For tomorrow, I'll be looking at another one in the mirror.
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This poem has been published in the book 'The Last Flower Of Spring'. Buy the paperback copy on Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y9sydnxn