A bold, sensuous, agonising, and brutally candid verse. In Yeats’ words, ‘the ceremony of innocence is dead.’ Here’s the intense prose-poem by Anika, in Different Truths.
Play:
It’s my 16th birthday. There’s something about turning 16 that feels mischievous. I sit with a drink in my hand… and four down my throat. There’s something about the way I sit wearing that short skirt that screams the need to grow up quick. But that’s just my legs. My mind already believes to have matured at the ripe age of 16. And that peep through a hole between my folded legs seems like the Bermuda Triangle all my relationships get lost in.
Fast forward:
Just another day in class. I have my hand more up than down and it seems to piss people off. It’s a rat race and everyone has the illusion of victory. Peers rated on a scale of 10. Ten being someone who can sit perfection down on the bed, pull up a chair in front and imitate. I am a well-oiled machine that knows how to run. Just not when it comes to friends.
Fast forward x4:
The summation of my life is a task to be overtaken at your own risk. I’m fast. In all the various connotations. And occasionally furious too. Mainly when asked to slow down. The pace I’m at competes with my own heartbeat and always seems to outrun it.
Fast forward x6:
An empty classroom, and me hunched over a desk. Bawling. The beats per minute seem to have won, and leaped over to a 120. Are they hypomanic, or am I? Yes, I’ve started reading. My daily digest consists of (typing) B i p o l a r and G a d. Lamictal. P o r n h…I get carried away too, don’t judge. But my hands now are more on my forehead or covering my eyes than they are up in the air or down in my pants. Nice change, it’s just a phase I’m sure it’ll pass.
Fast forward x 10:
After a lonely birthday, a friendship that seems more like a sex fuelled iceberg and nine hours of talk time spent on Mr. Psychiatrist, here I am. Still trying to keep myself lively and motivated. Getting through 4/5 final exams equate to the tons that I’ve given before. I look at the person in the mirror, and while she’s not perfection, she’s a human being. Scarred and wounded. But alive. Breathing. And that’s all that seems to matter.
Fast forward x 2:
I’m rapid cycling. In between the bouts of depression and the anger, I go for runs. It’s hard to breathe sometimes. And sometimes? I just keep a steady finger on this vein running across my neck. Counting the beats per minute. The beats that I once used to race, now motivate me to learn how to walk again.
Fast forward x 10. Play:
I’m sat on the edge of my bed. Playing back the tapes of how I got here. Of how I became the dropout, bipolar but mostly depressed, 17-year-old that flirts with the idea of death every 10 minutes. I’m a wounded soldier, with scars that are still healing. Scars that might never heal. And maybe I won’t remember most of this. But I have my feelings, as extreme as they are, a pen and a paper, collectively what I call, this writers paraphernalia.
Picture design Anumita Roy
#Poem #IntensityOfFeelings #DeathOfInnocence #ScarsOfLife #Dipressions #FeelingOfChange #IntensePoem #DifferentTruths
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