By Keerthana Jegatheesan
I carried the weight of you,
For twenty turns of the sun and more
All for the promise of a better life.
The once precocious child,
Now untethered and lost
The golden bars of your gilded cage
glistening with false promises,
My trust drowning in the sea of abandonment.
The echo of the promise ringing in my ears
Is this truly a better life?
The rage of betrayal consumes my heart
As the fire licks my skin, ravaging
The taste of ink and paper still bitter on my tongue
My regrets trickle down ever so gently
Like soft tears weathering my skin
As I drown in the choices I made.
Choices of aeons past and millennia to come
Each of the scholar’s accolades on the wall
I long to eviscerate.
Winters pass, yet nothing changes
This soul aged, no anchor, searching still
For whispers of hope, the compasses that once
Pointed my true north -
for reasons we bear no control over -
now search their own epiphanies
One at a time leaving with worn hearts - until
All that is left is me and my solitary candle.
Will I find land or burn to ashes?
The embers of this story untold,
The thread yet to unravel,
This is me, and I am utterly lost at sea
Drifting in the wreckage of my imagined salvation.