Ode to a stranger

statutory warning: It's NOT a poem!


Sitting in the class on a dull Friday morn,

So many people around me...

Makes me feel even more lonely.

NO. ‘Lonely’ perhaps, is not the right word.

What is it that I am feeling?

OR, am I feeling at all?

It’s not rage, neither grief,

Nor the apprehension of a bleak future...

I’ve just turned into a fossilized tree!

I see them all around-

Laughing, loving, hating, mating;

Doing some substantial work...

Or the façade of it at least!

I don’t need to put on that mask again;

It has been embossed into my face, FOREVER.

The mask of careless sobriety, mask of a joker

I am lost underneath the mound of masks.

I feel sick of the suffocation they cause,

But I can’t evade them...

They are a part of my existence now!

I can’t even recall how I used to look like-

The fuel that I once had inside me,

Is turning into a debris of unused love.

I can see my life sinking every day, every moment

Sinking into the quicksand of it.

Give me a sparkle, light me up:

Let those fuels burn me down.

I want to scream in pain,

Smell the odour of my own burning skin

& when all is gone,

Only the ashes are left,

Will you not care to search for something?

Find my soul from under the piles of ash-

It’s waiting for so long,

It’s sinking for eternity...

For thy flame to come and show it its way.