By Arayana Panwar
i carry fullness like famine.
my eyes — they shine,
yet cry.
i'm so full of love and empathy,
yet hollow, and unkind.
i speak of love.
i speak of empathy.
but what is love, really?
a disguise.
a mask i wear to hide the fact that i hate,
that i resent,
that i am cold.
not by nature, perhaps,
but by corrosion —
a decay of the soul.
i'd want to heal this world,
so heeding, and cruel.
but who am i?
who am i to heal anyone?
i cannot even speak,
without my own words betraying me.
somewhere deep in my heart,
there resides a parasite —
a blood-sucking mite.
a sort of hatred enshrined,
vulnerability oozing from my might.
i wake with thunder in my throat.
yes, i know this thunder very well —
it is the scream of guilt,
the scream of truth withheld.
the moon knew my name,
but the world refused to listen.
i have written letters to the darkness —
oh yes, i have —
long, desperate letters,
with trembling hands,
and ink drawn from the well of my despair.
not letters, but confessions,
folded into shadows,
sealed with silence.
begging for it to see me,
not just as a girl,
not just as a reprobate,
but as the flicker of a soul
too weary to burn.
the darkness —
it did not speak,
but it opened its arms with the tenderness of a grave.
it cradled me as only the void can —
with the intimacy of absence,
with the kind of love that doesn't comfort,
only swallows.
even the mirror started to grow quiet when i stood in front of it —
what greater indictment than that?
a reflection that refuses to reflect,
as if it too has judged me.
and once,
i tried to bleed the rage out —
on paper,
on skin,
on god —
but the ink refused to run.
so did i.
i’m not the cure.
i never was.
i'm the wound that yearns to bloom —
but only because
it cannot bear to rot unseen.