Author: Kanika

• 

Each second marks
the number of times
you thought of them today.
Yet you are 86,400 times
and a lifetime away
to make them yours.

As fascinated it is to
look at the stars
It’s terrifying to know
those are mere a collection
of dust and gas from up close.
So, when you are near them
You know—they are nothing.

Even when you move a mountain
in front of their doorway
as they like hills,
They don’t step out in their balcony
to witness the efforts of your mutilated heart.

You bring a whole garden
and spring to them but
it’s not their time
nor any intention to bloom

They peel off their skin so often,
the skin you spent years to get under
that you become a stranger
standing under the same umbrella.

A person in your imagination
is so different than in real life
and is usually the ambassador
of delivering pain to you
while you manifested Earth’s flowers for them.

You are their dream catchers.
And for them you are an occasional décor.
And you wonder what did you do wrong?

It’s cause,
people don’t love you
the way you love them.

• 

©kanikachugh

Mirrors, for me,
had been traveling interiors.

At 7, I look at it,
travel to lunch breaks
where my friends sit
and talk about the hot blood
and the devil’s agony in me.
I agree.
With a smile.

At 16, I look at it.
A confused face, big head
and forever rolling eyes.
Understand why they dislike me.
I travel to a still place.
I see ‘her’. Who is ‘her’?
Perhaps, someone is there with me.

At 35, I look at it.
No masks, she is touchable,
full of mercies.
Disappointments under the eyes
and within the lines of smile.
I look like my mother.
I love it.

At 80, I look at it
And I say,
I carry your tiredness, grandma;
who possessed a look of
‘Watch me while I burn you
inside out’ but fed
morsels of her heart to everyone.
It jolted me into an action and I wear grandma’s pendant.
My grandfather’s love in that pendant.
Only in the pendant.
I learn why she always wore it.

Mirrors with their dead humour strangely made my love grow stronger for the women I loved and for the woman I was failing to love through the reflection.

©kanikachugh

Sis, you become 200% attractive when you get comfortable in your skin. So, make the sound of your heels clacking worthwhile and tread forward.
Happy Women’s Day, Ladies 💖

©️kanikachugh

• 

Sometimes it’s too much to bear. This anxiety. What does it trying to tell me?? I pledged to myself that I won’t run away from my emotions but lately this promise had been really hard to keep.

And what happens when I face them— this weird sensation in my stomach, this uneasiness doesn’t tell me if something good is going to happen or bad?? I’m unsure. For me, it hadn’t been a red alert for only adversities but had encompassed its root for good things too that is bound to come my way— ruining it before it could start.

And I spent hours and hours and more hours deciphering what it’s trying to tell me. Somewhere, over the other side of bridge there is someone waiting but I know I would never cross it because I am pretty sure I will drown in the middle. First steps aren’t the problem for me but tangibility of bridges have always been unreliable for the giver. And I fall, I drown, I gasp, I cry no one comes for help. Not even the soul I saw on the other side — who, in all consciousness, still trying to make sense if I am worth saving.

It scares me. It will happen all over again. It scares me that I am going to try jump across without any fear though I am terribly scared of water (but in reality probably of staying unloved and unwanted pretending to be seasons—unbothered by anyone). I will make tresses of my hair to overcome the distance if need be knowing its going peak out the pain in my roots. But it petrifies me. This vicious cycle of mine, the result of which I never learn, the result which is non-existent. You can’t tame a wild heart, can you? maybe console for a bit while but it’s going to run on its horses again the moment you let it.

Living holding the things in cage isn’t living either. So what do you do? You let your heart run wild. With zero directions, no navigational skills and stupid bravery. And I will let it too. I fear it.

Sometimes, I fear my fearlessness.

©️kanikachugh

From where do I even start?
Talking about the cradles
that adults aren’t support to use.

Tell me how deep do
I need to dig before I
extract courage directly
from the heart of the earth using
my bare, muddy hands?

When can I rest
in the arms of
worry-less world
when stopping to
catch a breath
feels guilty?

I have a home,
an abode with all
the amenities of the world.
And I love staying there
as long as I can.
But my imagination is dying
taking away my home with it.

I wish I could find a cure,
a cure to release resentments,
a cure to procure more love,
a cure so that I never need one
because we all know
a cure is wanted only
after meeting terrible tragedies.

©kanikachugh

• 

It’s a bedspread and a hanging roof,
Thoughts when I can’t hold my head high.
A bed of thousands rough hills and
hundred ways to crush them under thin ice.
Or I just write poetry
murdering their morale
sipping ugliness from
the hem of my skirt.

Sitting across the table
they mock the way I handle my butter knife,
or the depth of my blouse,
or the unnecessary forks I never give them.
I could easily mishandle my cards
and land that flipping knife
in their soft, filthy, world-doesn’t-need gut.
I thought they were bad people.
Is it too late
for me to not be
W-I-C-K-E-D?

I just wanna have fun!
One line, two lines and then three
all I see is boundaries.
Why there is a stranger on my face?
Why there is a stranger on my legs?
You no pretty,
You burn butterflies into
ashes with you stare.
My slap on your cheek
and I am a drunk
H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E.

I sprawl across the bed
un-gently, motionless
sinking in Salem issues.
Orthodox minds and shrewdness
raises me every night.
The demonic presence in your heads,
work of evil on your tongues
incinerated fresh hopes, innocent fates,
begging hands, kissing lips
and you called us
W-I-T-C-H-E-S.

The roof hangs like a bodiless head
what does it want?
Want me to pick myself up?
Before the rage engulfs me
or be scared of a grotesque face
that makes me stay low.
But I am not afraid.
I am contemplating
fitting you in this bed box
as your forever tomb.

©kanikachugh