~ imposter.

Alone on the roads
Silent night
All the streetlights
Flickering, all the crickets chirping
Unsteady steps -
Nobody notices
Maybe I'm
Invisible? Or perhaps
Nobody cares enough
To tell me I'm walking very-fast-the-wrong-way
If-I-walk-fast-enough-maybe-I'll-reach-somewhere
Even if it is only
Back where I came from, again.
Belief is
A dangerous thing
Belief is
Making yourself think
The waterfall is going up
When you're the one
Falling down.
To think!
I could've made it -
To think -
If only I hadn't faltered -
To think:
If only I would've stopped and looked around!
I could have gone where everyone else is going
Would've reached up to the tallest Ferris wheels
Instead of back down in the dumps;
Maybe I should just remember
Ferris wheels...don't stay up
Forever
But will the time in between
Be enough for me to reach
Before the last ticket for my ride is sold?
What if I
Am willing to pay a higher price?
Will they listen? What if I
Pack my bags and go somewhere
Nobody has gone before
Then I won't feel like an
Imposter anymore.

~ Vruta, November 2017.

Reduction.

'Kurt Cobain' - Artwork by Russell Thomas - middleagebulge.com.

Do you know what it feels like? Do you know what it feels like to listen to a song, love it, and then listen to it so many times you numb yourself to its words?  Then you have to find a new song, and you do that to the new song too, and you hate yourself for doing it?  Do you know what it feels like to think about how you could write about anything and everything before, but now you are only a shell of nothingness, and you also write that way?  Almost like a hermit crab.  Nothing truly holds meaning anymore.  I clutch at drinking straws but there’s no soda left in my opaque, freezing white glass, only sorrow.  The last dregs of chocolate left behind at the bottom of my cold coffee taste like cough syrup; they’re not bittersweet, like the romantic novel I have been reading.

Do you know what losing love is like?  From your friends, from her, from...yourself?  No?  Let me attempt to tell you.  Let me paint pictures with my sorrow, I will write sonnets and stories and disguise all my repentances into symphonies uncharacteristic of the likes of Beethoven. Let me write in the same font she uses on her carefully crafted—curated—blog.  Let me wonder how her eyes will flit across my words, trying to find a hint of herself in them—oh, who am I kidding, she won’t come back—

She won’t come back, so the person I was with her won’t either.  There was a time I noticed everything from the dew on the grass to how the sunlight made red roses look like lava, back then, I was a volcano, spouting life-truths as though I knew everything about the universe and what was in it: especially us.  One of the things I think I did not know was that we would end, eventually, do you know what it’s like to end?  I don’t mean dying, no, I mean the ending that knocks silently on your door in the morning.  You would probably let it in for breakfast because it was tired and in want.  You would show it where the bathroom was in case it wanted to take a cold shower.  You would sit on the swings, together, in silence, though—because endings can’t talk, never.  You would read your favourite books to it in the dead of night when the rain refuses to stop pouring.  Then you would make sandwiches, and while you cut the tomatoes and make them bleed, the ending will snatch a butter knife from your unsuspecting drawer and it will stab you and draw your blood: because endings know exactly what to do with a butter knife.  The red roses she gave you will turn into lava and will melt the letters you wrote to her (but never sent).  Then they will be black.

Do you know what it is like to slowly lose sight of your dreams?  Do you know where the long walks on chilly nights with the smell of smoke in the air went?  Do you know why words I read make no sense—am I asking too many questions?  Do you know what it’s like to try to find answers in your questions because people can’t help you themselves?  Do you know how I feel when I fail; have you ever failed to try?  I wish you knew.  

I wish you knew how sometimes the sadness comes in waves.  Sometimes I sit outside on the sidewalk at two in the morning, with my tea, and my drooping teabag-like eyelids, and I stare at the grey shadows between areas illuminated by orange streetlights, thinking about how even if you have almost everything, you’d never have everything.  Some of us have less of that everything than most; I believe they’re braver than the rest.  I wish you knew that I’m tired of being brave.  I also hope that after reading this, you would still be brave enough to stay with me.  But if you’d rather not, I would understand.  Not everyone wants to be reduced.

~

Slaves.

Slaves

We are all slaves, such slaves!
Slaves of the people we love,
And who act a certain way,
Not knowing they hurt us,
Because they don't care.
We are slaves, for we do not see any good
In trying to right their wrongs,
For we know their plates are full
With sin,
And if we make them aware
They will say something worse
Than what they already had,
And we are slaves, we are afraid
That we might bring upon them misfortune
And so we keep quiet
Not daring to utter a word
Held back by fear, helplessness,
And love.
Such slaves!

~Vruta Gupte.

Two-Word Poem #1

Two-word poems are actually quite elegant.
Here's my first one.

“If Only."

If you liked it, please leave a comment below or go to the “My Own Writing" for more of my poems. Thank you!

Being Lost.

I've given myself a challenge.

It's called 'The Write a Free-verse Poem in Three Minutes Challenge'.

So here goes.  (I'm writing this poem like I wrote 'Stars in the Sky': spontaneously.)

Being Lost.

The little girl
Wearing a red dress
With yellow polka-dots
And blue ribbons
Went for a walk 
On the dirt road
Leading into the forest
Where she saw a lake
That she couldn't cross
So she sat there on the shore
She sat there for a thousand years
The immortal girl cries immortal tears
Her tears flow into the lake
The lake gets bigger and bigger
And scarier and darker
Until it goes full circle around the girl
Immortal girl with immortal curls
Swirling violently
To sink a ship
To sink a ship of immortality
She shudders and takes a deep breath
And falls asleep on the small island
The small island that is now her land
Two hundred years later
The lake has dried up
But the immortal girl
With her immortal tears
With her immortal curls
And her immortal fears
Is nowhere to be found.

~Vruta Gupte.