Lamentation: Lacerations

There were wounds.

Big wounds. Bad wounds.

I was slashed day after day

with a heartless dagger

carried and maneuvered carelessly

by two of my creators.

They first put me together

and with a right attached to that

they cut me into pieces.

Parents, anyways?

The wounds turned into scars

painless in blissful ignorance;

attention and care would only hurt more.

I learnt early on that it’s best not to care

and fuss over little things like your emotions!

So my heart was buried.

It died a slow death

that was eventual and obvious to them –

those who had first longed to hear it

now waited for it to stop

and as they thought it did

they carelessly (again) snatched it from me

and made it one of their own.

All our three hearts buried side by side

when it could have been a different story altogether.

Hearing fights I thought was every child’s pastime

for I heard them all the time.

in the presence as well as in the absence

of a proper excuse.

I heard them – their voices escaping the ears

of the plaster, mortar and paint

heard, because seeing even through a peephole

something would inadvertently poke at my eyes

warning me to never disclose the secrets I saw

for word was to be kept

that ours was a happy home!

Champion! Me? I was heroic at school.

There never was a question of underperformance

what with a shadow I now call pressure

permanently attached to my identity.

Excellent! Me?

Performing for two, my heart throbbed

every time the results came

maybe due to the thrill of seeing happy faces

emerge from the scowls, at least for a day.

Or maybe because I would exist, I would be noticed –

applauded…unlikely

criticized…surely

made an object of discussion

my efforts under scrutiny, my performance being cross-examined

They told me I was always ‘okay’ but never ‘good enough’

never appreciated…why?

My pride would grow?!

My childish ego would swell?!

Encouragement, fatherly pats, motherly hugs…

these were others’ candies.

For me there wasn’t even the forbidden sweetness

of mild acknowledgement

but I labored on without these

for there never was an option, anyways.

Another examination, another result day was inching closer.

The astrologer, the miracle man, made predictions

about a girl he had never seen and would never see:

‘She’ll grow worse every year’

Worse?! Define, please.

They chose to believe in the stars above

but not in the person before their eyes.

Any which way I grew, branched out, bloomed, bore fruit

was evil…so not right.

‘Our child has been brainwashed.

Let those who did it be cursed.’

“Let me be cursed.”

It was my own mind that got courage enough

to break the mould and spill out.

There isn’t a third party involved here.

What’s wrong anyways?

Your speculations are coming true –

something you always believed would happen

is happening. Finally.

Isn’t that nice, mother?

Your child isn’t your robot anymore.

The circuits have long burnt

and the pain is coming back.

The numbness, just an imposed delirium of long ago,

has been replaced by a tingling soreness

the stinging clarity of hurt.

This thawing of a frozen life

this emergence of a living portrait

this diminution of an enforced dementia

assures me of my humanness.

I was walking one day

waking with gazes, that threatened,

all around me.

So afraid they would spot little fragments of pain

embedded on my skin or hidden behind my eyes

that I lost direction,

found myself trapped in an impasse

Dark, wet, murky corners before me

and my past behind creeping upon me

too bloody for me to crawl back into…

And then, there, right there,

waiting for an escape that wasn’t to be found

my heart skipped a beat.

Heart? Heart! Heart?

Muffled beats unheard before became throbs –

threatening, reeking of revolution, shy of a façade.

What had been taken away then?

Something snatched in haste

they must have snatched the lungs or the liver away from me

Some bloody anatomical tomb

that never had a life

that never pumped life into me.