What has happened, 

where did all the joy go? You tell yourself: 

you are not a victim. 

This is life for everyone. 

Suck it up. 

But it doesn't change the way you feel. 

They say that it will pass, and I think we will too, 

because of the severity of our rigid views. 

But maybe in the meantime, 

I can hope to be the same again, 

I can hope to feel the joy of the sun on my skin, 

or feel nostalgia when the clouds cry rain; 

I can wish to be surrounded by kindness 

and not dismissal, 

and I can pray that all of it passes, all but us. 

The Step

In the morning, when I wake up, 

And feel the wind blowing in through the window,

The sun streaming in, the birds calling out:

every creature welcoming the new day, 

I turn over and shut my eyes, shut the world. 

I want to embrace this gift of a new day, 

But something heavy in my mind settles in, 

And I have conflicting thoughts. 

I want to get up, go for a run. 

My body feels tired.

I want to take a shower, make breakfast for Mother.

She cooks better anyway.

I want to start the day with positivity. 

What good will it do when all my days are the same. 

I should take control of my life.

I should just roll with what happens. 

Only dead fish go with the flow, and I am not dead. 

Aren’t I dead already?

I am alive. I am living. 

I am numb, and I don’t have the drive to live. 

The first step is stepping outside of the comfort bubble.

Shut up, shut up, shut up. It never works. 

Just one step. One step and my journey will begin. 

The more optimistic I am, the more failure hurts. 

On some days, depression wins. 

I stay in bed, shut everything out, 

push everyone away, lay in bed

as if I were dead. 

On fewer days, I take that step. 

I get up. I push myself to run. 

I experience the flush of having

oxygen running in my body,

I feel thirsty, I feel my muscles aching

as if I were alive. 

Sometimes, it is that small step that matters. 

It changes everything, disregards life’s incongruence. 

And after, even the taste of failure 

is the mark of successful existence.

When I realise

When I realise

  that sunshine no longer brightens up my eyes, 

no longer makes me run away into the shade; 

rain doesn't make me feel awake anymore,

I stop wanting to catch a butterfly on my finger and make it linger there,

that I no longer associate flowers with love as I associate it with grief,

and I have begun counting my days backward; 

Counting days backward to the day I had to start living without you,

that I start dreaming when I wake up and living when I sleep,

And I no longer wish for class to get over:

it is more like wishing for my life,

I understand that without you

I am merely a pebble who has forgotten loving and living and wishing,

 being in the sun, in the rain, away from pain.

Merely a pebble.

An apology

If you know me, you would know that I have always asked my friends to love themselves so that they could learn to love others. But today, I am going to write about self hatred instead of self love.

If there is anything about me, it is that I am not good at expressing my gratitude.
If I like you, and I talk to you a lot, you have probably noticed that I am caring one moment and completely sarcastic the next.
You must've seen a change in me, like multiple attitudes. And maybe, I hurt you because of it. 
I might've been very interested in your life one day, and extremely disinterested the other. 
Maybe you've felt bad...you might've changed your views about me but hey, I'm still the good person you used to talk to.

So consider this an apology, a letter, a poem, a song, anything, but know that it comes straight from my heart. 

You are so nice to me.
You seem interested in my life and show me lots of love.
You tell me that as friends: we were meant to be,
like the sand and the sea.
It makes me happy.
And whenever I am happy,
a feeling of fear, a chill creeps into my body from my heart.
I feel scared,
euphoria turns into despondency because of the fear
that I will do something wrong to mess it up.
And that feeling of depression and desolation ruins me.
It brings a change, a weak metanoia;
but a metanoia still
that destroys the moment.
And that is how one day you are speaking to an elated soul,
and the next- a completely different one.
And how I mess up perfect friendships just like that,
makes me want to run on the ground and fall into a hole.
How is it that I can wish so hard for a moment to come,
and then ruin it by doing something really bad?

My heart tears at my mind for doing that,
and I tear at my soul;
and an apology is required.
I am sorry for killing the sapling you sowed in our garden.
Sorry for killing something that was meant to be a giant tree.
And I know, if you cared about it, a mistake like this can never be pardoned.
I am sorry for all the stories I had to render incomplete.

"baby, fight.." mother rhino cried.

So the baby rhino said to her mother,

“mother look! My horn is getting bigger and stronger!

I will wait for the day it will be as magnificent as yours!”

“Yes, my daughter, I hope it will be stronger and finer,

The best of them all”

So she waited and waited,

For her horn to get better,

She and her mother separated.

One day they met, mother's eyes were wet.

Baby rhino gasped, “mother, you're bleeding, where is your horn?!”

Mother cried and with pain in her eyes, said

“Humans are coming, your friends were killed after being poached, merely out of vengeance.

Humans are coming, run, it has hurt me a lot,

These are your mother's last words, my dear,

Run, run far away, and never get caught”.

The baby rhino, now all big, with a magnificent horn of her own,

Lived in fear, fear of losing her horn,

But a greater fear of letting her own daughter see her the way

She saw her mother dehorned and in pain.

She encountered human horn traders, poached,

Her horn fell off with now a bloody mass of brain.

She said the same words to her daughter,

that her mother had said to her.

Saw her daughter panic in fear,

Closed her eyes and slipped a tear.