By Prachi Dhawan
A stranger once asked me, What is your curse?
What is the thing that disorders you so deeply, it disrupts your sleep at night and wakes you up in cold sweat? The thing that, out of nowhere, leaves you with jitters and anxiety?
I said,
I have suffering and disease written in my pages—an outmoded concept of torment and scars that bleed into reality.
They say if you don’t bleed, you have no worth.
That suffering connects all your internal dots.
I have flowers and uprooted pits in my heart.
Whenever someone plucked a flower, an empty space of malady was left behind-incurable, if the flower withered away.
I have wind in my lungs, yet I feel choked and encumbered.
I have everything to have, but nothing to hold.
I have desires and dreams.. a prodigal feeling of wanting that clogs my veins.
But it’s never long before they vanish into the brown dusk of time and the sweet rain of life.
I have passion to do everything that makes life a comforting home-
but not enough time.
Time is a ticking bomb. It goes off, and everything that once made you feel alive-
blows up into pieces.
A realm beyond this malicious life does not exist for long.
We take and hide so much of who we are,
that in the end, all that is left
is someone we no longer recognize.
This is my curse:
I can never do everything I want,
live the way I want,
learn the things I crave,
read the words that call to me-
because society, time, and disease perceive it all.
They have built a firm, unbreakable construct:
a human stuck in a soulless body.
I do not write with ink.
I write with blood.
Because it is not words that are printed on the page-
it is emotions. It is tears.