You Are Anger. You Are Grief. – Delhi Poetry Slam

You Are Anger. You Are Grief.

Sudipti Saha

 I have moments where I want to slit these invisible threads, 
 between you and me. 
 And when I say you, I’m talking to my anger and grief, 
 As if you were living not within me, but in front of me. 
 I could slash at you, and dissipate you into 
 nothingness. 
 I’d be on my atrociously worst behavior, 
 but I wouldn’t mind the carnage. 
 Because you have been painful to me. 
 You have been aching my body,  my heart and my mind
 for a long time and over the years
 I’ve written you a million love letters, 
 hoping to change you into happiness and peace. 
 
 But you’re like a chasm caused by a
 seismic drift inside of me, 
 cleaving me in halves of reality where
 one half of me is holding tight onto these scrapes of joy
 and the other half is relinquishing itself to shadows
 in deep burrows of the caves inside me. 
 Honestly, 
 I’m afraid of the shadows spreading like a
 melancholic mildew throughout.
 
 And if all parts of me built a house, I feel like 
 these halves of me are the only walls left standing 
 in the ruins of it, 
 with a storm brewing in the sky and 
 if I were stronger, 
 I’d claim that ruinous storm in surrender. 
 
 But my soul demands two pieces of it to be offered to you,
 for it says there must be balance.
 And my love is in porcelain cracks, 
 pieces are easier to take out than they are to 
 fuse together.

Although, 
 if heartbreak were an heirloom, 
 I’d keep it safe and close.
 pass all these pieces of me and you down through generations,
 hoping not to destroy it but mould it into love. 
 
 But you are so heavy on my shoulders, 
 aching me always.
 So I asked a friend, 
 what should I do with all that burdens me.
 and she advised, 
 darling, what you cannot carry, 
 you must plant.
 
 But how can I plant you? 
 You are anger and grief, volatile and inflammable. 
 You are living and dangerous. 
 You are unfulfilled always, and forever. 
 You are the descent into a spiral of darkness without light. 
 
 If I plant you, you will be calamitous and cataclysmic. 
 My stars are merciless, unsparingly mapping out these fates.
 And they will not align for me and mercy, 
 as they haven't in ages.
 All this ache of you is residing here. 
 So, you and I, we aligned so perfectly, 
 it was a crime. 
 
 But I am no criminal. 
 So, I will not plant you. 
 I will not pass you through generations. 
 I will not snuff you out.
 
 But I will
 sever our invisible ties and set you free. 
 May the ginormous world offer you
 all the love I could not. 
 
 Anger, may you find compassion and joy.
 Grief, may you find a place to rest, inearth, 
 and bloom into acceptance.


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