Note: As you read it, please think of the characters this way:
The midwife is the writer (the poem is written from her perspective)
The mother is the mind
The child is the creation
Been here with her for a while now,
I swear by the sweat of my brow-
For too long she's been trying and failing
Her will now, seems trammelled by a railing.
Mishap, if this is not my terrain,
What becomes of all this pain?
Can't let this new life wither
The least, not with me hither.
She has for months, days
Carried a creation of finesse.
Was she, by fate merely a bearer,
Star-crossed, not to deliver?
Of her thoughts, I wonder
To faith, would she surrender?
To listen, I try; but I don't mean to pry
What I yearn the most to hear though, is the first cry.
I think of the child in his prime, grown several feet-
The places he'd go, the people he'd meet.
In this world so difficult, would he be understood?
More often than not, even misunderstood?
Tonight, I sat down with my notebook and a pen,
To feel better and useful, to write two lines or ten.
I did this last week and words came to me with ease
But tonight, they seem elusive and all they do is tease.
I wrote and rewrote a few lines, here and there-
What to me seemed a bit phoney or forced, just to be fair.
When I started though, I didn’t know what I would write about
Tempted I was to stop, but something kept me going throughout.
At times you find your purpose once on your way, it’s okay to just write;
Between your will and white paper, this is your fight.
Somewhere along the way, we’ve been made to believe
happiness has a quota,
that it has a pattern, an alternation with sadness.
That it comes to you but takes something in return-
for two happy occurrences in a row, you feel like you’ve
trespassed a sacred decree.
That to set it right, the third therefore,
should make you sad.
Undeserving, is it? To be happy without caution,
to laugh with abandon.
What is it that makes happiness feel less like
something owned and more like something borrowed?
Isn’t that always the case?
Always the same phrase,
“Keep trying till you get there."
But now, I don’t even know where.
The closer I get to you,
Remaining steps, a few.
Then you do that vault,
That’s not even my fault!
Will I be, but sane?
If everything goes in vain.
Because I didn’t listen to them,
Because I didn’t fit the frame?
Everything I plan, I jotter,
Like a line in the water.
Where do you disappear?
Leaving me in utter despair.
They say you are impossible,
That you aren’t plausible.
That I’ll forget my place,
And soon your face.
So long I’ve been tired of this chase,
Running in loops, caught in a maze.
How long am I to chase you in awe,
Before I finally let you, but leave?
Amusing it is to think that we live many lives in a single lifetime.
Who I was yesterday, who I am today, who I would be tomorrow?
Who I am in rumours, in distorted memories, in assumptions, in baseless conclusions?
Who I am to everyone that holds me dear, to everyone that held me dear once.
There's change, sacrifice, growth, growing out of it, what not- even a version of myself I would rather not recognise/revisit.
When I say you know me well, do I acknowledge a version of myself I pick thinking of as ultimate,
when it is brave of me to assume I know myself too well?
As restless as I am on countless nights,
With wavering nerves, like chasing kites;
Hope glimmers in the stillness of my dimly lit room-
By chance, I latch onto the soothing rhythm of a loom.
I follow it, resolute, in search of peace-
Hopeful for a wave of calming breeze.
Now, in this middle of nowhere I feel, safe from mayhem
Even when sleep is a distant dream.
-On coping and finding your safe space even in chaos
Unsure of an ending so abrupt, I resort to a triplet of full stops
Greedy for more, I hang my words to commas sprinkled in drops.
For questions crooked than the curve of the question mark
Or exclamation marks to mellow down a frank remark.
For shield and flavor, meaning and tone-
Roles so many, but do they yearn for a life of their own?
Can we have a conversation heart to heart?
Just you and me bonding over some tart.
Let's laugh over some old jokes and pranks,
Complete our sentences like fill in the blanks.
Tell me everything, from beginning to end-
The good, the bad; from letters you chose not to send.
I'll tell you of all the little things I remember about us
Ah! So much to tell you; don't mind If I slightly digress.
Let's talk in feelings; as language dims to the background
To feel more deeply, lay bare our vulnerabilities unbound.
We would see more clearly then, even with our eyes closed
Hear distinctly, the beauty of all those words transposed.
Fancy walking in reverse, stop at everything we want to see?
To admire and reflect, like inside a museum in the mind's eye.
This time we will hold hands; profound and patient at every stop-
More than when we were alive and chasing rainbows over the top.
Somedays, you just have this inexplicable urge to do something, anything. You start in nervous excitement and pause somewhere in between. The final picture you had in mind seems too far from accomplishment and your doing seems hacky, almost meaningless. At last, you stop. Sometimes, we do this to people.
As we grow warmer
to iterations of love,
search for meanings
in shared silences;
And in solitude, think of
obligations, expectations;
Wary of a time when
"want to" becomes "have to",
somewhere on this road along,
there's a fear to belong.
Do you ever mourn the loss of a talent? That tiny plant you forgot to water years ago but bam! catch a glimpse of, in the garden of another and the despair slowly creeps in?
In parallel : somewhere between the pages of dusty school notebooks, sketch pads filled with old watercolour or the rusting strings of an old guitar, lies a ghost of latent potential, long awaiting a touch of revival, to come back to life, this time through someone who knows too well never to let go, again.
Sometimes you unwittingly knock on a bitter memory's door. You flinch by reflex, then stand there waiting anyway. The door opens in no time, only to snatch you in to a whirl for which you have no energy to contain nor to circumvent.
A wanderer was once caught and left to live in a prison. Whether he protested, nobody knows. Soon had he come to love the place so much that he spent all his time protecting it, adoring it, decorating it. He thanked his captor every day for his prized possession. Being let out of the prison became his worst nightmare. But do you ever feel you're a soul trapped in a body?
Stop and listen to me a moment least?
Of everything you consider, often I come the last.
I see right through your mask,
That's no big for me a task.
You hush me when I say you're wrong
But you can't keep me down that long.
There I come, as you slip in to sleep,
To all those secrets you keep.
You resort to dreams and then I'm gone,
I silence my tone.
You wake up, fret and regret,
Your heart, a trumpet.
This is why I'm too loud at times,
I'm your conscience.
I think I should have left her behind-
Behind, when we first met.
She seemed lonely-
Lonely much to be seen so.
Her eyes had something about it-
It promised me comfort.
It wooed me. Fooled me.
Moved me- to darkness.
I tripped down in the dark,
She did not leave me, still.
Offered me but, her hand
I breathed relief.
She sang me a song-
A song of melancholy.
I said, " Oh holy! Never have
I ever been so soothed!".
A streak flashed from the skies
And I could see the room.
Alas! My palms were bloody!
Her thorns had clenched my skin
But it had felt like silk.
I sprang up from where I was,
Rushed to find a door.
I was stuck, but in my own head.