By Prashant Tripathi
Born without a name and an identity,
That chair and I glanced at each other several times.
A land mobbed with stereotypes was called diversity
It was waiting to term our stories as crimes.
I and that chair glanced at each other several times.
Humane became less I, when asked to name my sexuality.
Different was the chair, who implored for a heartbeat.
I implored, just call me flesh and bones,
And let me be with my individuality.
With a creaking wail, the chair asked not to be treated as a seat
That's how we set out and began to greet.
The way I began walking was structured by society,
Whilst that chair stood there, deaf and blind.
All I could feel was bitterness against its sanity,
Whilst I could hear and see myself losing my mind.
I and that chair still had a lot to unwind.
I trod lightly, so that no one would spot the ambiguity
Not even I could discern a part of me dying.
And again I stumbled and bid farewell to strangers rightly.
The delusions turned real, and heart inured to lying.
That chair and I had forgotten trying.
Them, who thought there's a label for every personality;
Chair, who got nothing but wood of apathy.
Why the world always coins a term for sexuality?
Can't a being believe, wear, sit, cry, behave, or die
In any form without being stated as the term catastrophe?
I and that chair feel intimate to abnormality.
Across every turn, I conformed to make-believe humanity
Until a trauma hit my soul hard to the core.
And the very earth tremored with my baggage of morality.
Something knocked and pounded on my perception's door.
Me, but that chair could endure no more.
So, I picked up the pieces of mind and perpetual anxiety.
Cognitive I became of sexual boundaries.
There are none — now I whisper to the chair slightly:
"I'm a being with heart, mind, soul, and some peace."
That chair and I had embraced our realities.
This day I have many possessions termed as profanity
All are mine, with acceptance, I nurture them dearly.
That chair is only wood, serving duality
Occupied or vacant, but can't feel queerly.
I and that chair sat next to each other, completing our sexualities.