No is a Complete Sentence
About the lies I tell and more
(By Jayasree Menon)
The stories were inspiring and intriguing,
Mystery, suspense, fantasy, adrenaline rush,
Yes, the formula was perfect.
There were romance and ecstasy too,
And melancholy and anxiety.
Yes, of course, some hate and anger, I mean, one couldn’t be so lame.
None of these are stuff that I am going to talk to you, but
About the lies I told myself, not that prince charming is coming my way.
It is pathetic, you see. And not about the mansion where we will live happily ever after.
Yes, I did tell myself these harmless ones, but I am not talking to you about those either.
But you would hate me for this I know, I told my body, the five-year long
Nagging headache was my hallucination,
The nightmares and recurring fevers are about a girl I read in a story.
It poured all night, the rhythmic tapping of rain drops on the roof tiles
Soothed me to sleep, water filled the landscape and morning was wet and dreary.
A crow swooped across to snatch a yellow leaf adrift far ahead,
Rain drops softly fell, drop by drop, forming concentric circles,
Perpetually multiplying into an infinite cascade.
Water all around, no land in sight, just endless waves embracing me tight.
I waited for the rain to stop, so I could set my paper boat afloat.
But it never stopped raining.
As my body broke in pain and insomnia, I said it was just us,
You and me; we stay put,
Irrespective.
“It’s just a bad dream. The phantom pain that claimed my
Right lower premolar at 12,
Was a figment of my imagination.”
We wake up to sunshine and dew drops
A thousand rainbows on each one of them
We wake up every morning to celebrate the universe.
Four decades later, the body said.
NO.
The gentle tapping of rain on the roof, a long night
After a weary day, the longing for the dawn.
About this poem:
Life teaches you to become a storyteller, when you have to deal with traumas early on in life. The beauty or irony of trauma lies in its perpetual nature, a never-ending nightmare. Trauma is not solely an individual experience, rather, it is embedded in the collective DNA of humanity. An artist or writer, when they sink deep into this genetic material, create magic.
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