By Sakshi Bhadani
Would it ask why the dark feels so familiar?
That daylight haunts me more—
Where the sun rises heavy, yet its rays never touch me?
The world spins forward—
Laughter spills, feet rush, dreams unfold—
Captions become milestones, marking lives I don’t live,
While I stay behind, watching through my phone screen,
A silent spectator in a world that never pauses.
And when my loved ones’ warm voices flow,
‘Come, it will be good for you,’
I step past the door,
Let the air brush my skin.
But I carry the weight of the walls with me,
Each thought a brick, stacking higher as I step—
Until the room is no longer behind me, but beneath my feet.
In the hollow laughter that escapes my thoughts,
I can’t wait to declare my social battery low
And crawl back into the castle with just my echo.
Where, all at once,
The carpet becomes my grass,
The ceiling light—my sun,
The hum of the AC—my breeze.
If nothing out there knows me,
At least my room does…
a little better.
Evenings feel kinder.
I’m not alone in my stillness,
A quiet hope, lost in music while I kick my feet on a swing.
If only for a while,
I’m where I almost belong.
Streetlights flicker awake below,
As the first stars blink above.
I hold onto conversations like lifelines,
Words ignite a spark—I pretend it never waned.
But when the calls end and voices fade,
I visit the places I vowed to escape.
On days when no one picks up,
The dark rings instead, reminding me the night has come.
Now, when sleep has been a distant land for days,
Its absence warps through my spine,
Stretching and twisting.
In that moment,
It’s not my head that aches,
But my mind.
It’s 4 a.m.
I face the mirror,
Hoping for clarity,
But what stares back is not me.
A pain so physical,
I can almost see it…
A reflection slipping out of the mirror,
A hand gently touches my cold, puffy face,
I can almost feel it …
The pain no longer screams, but whispers—
Just as I take the last breath of the storm.
The vivid reflection slowly mouths,
‘It’s going to be alright.’
Most days, I mourn my own existence—
A past self buried, a future self waiting.
But I am at peace, knowing my body is both graveyard and womb,
Where one version of me lies entombed,
Another waits to bloom .
If my life were a journey,
My days the longest flight,
Evenings the layovers,
And the night my final descent—
Just when my room prays for the hauntings to be over,
I open my eyes, arriving at the same destination as yesterday’s,
Wondering if I’m caught in the alchemy of my own making,
Or sinking into quicksand disguised as solitude.
And it wonders—does the dark ever leave?