A spectrum untorn.

It had been decided the moment she was born
what her identity ought to be, the colours
her body was supposed to humbly adorn.
The spectrum was but an elusive abstract
to her keen mind: always there yet intangible,
split by the chasm of accepted gender roles
into either pink or blue, leaving her imagination torn!
When she succumbed to her curiosity to ask
the questions that had long been unanswered,
silence greeted her queries, unable to explain
the why behind the existence of the holes
that had scarred a whole species, condemning
its members to an eternal conflict between
the feminine and the masculine – a divide
that had rendered all the colours on the scale forlorn.
Words became her allies in the confusion
that ensued, empowering her to seek her own
truth amidst the tempest, without taking a side.
The rule keepers told her she should not read –
“A lady does not belong with the written word!”,
kept echoing through the walls designed
to make her give in to pigeonholes, to hide
beneath the ceilings they had effusively built.
Her attire became the subject of scrutiny,
as did her voice which was apparently louder
than someone with two X chromosomes was
allowed, marking her as the leader of a mutiny.
Black, red, green – the colours she was drawn to
in various facets of life – were used as ammunition
to label her a witch, a misfit, a rule breaker.
The fact that they were blind to the colours
she could so clearly see on the spectrum
seemed inexplicable to her, for how can
blue and pink be the only hues visible
in an array of shades so violent and bright?!
What had been decided the moment she was born
was unacceptable to her rational soul,
for it refused to be contained by the shackles
that reeked of inequality and prejudice.
She made a choice not to listen to the voices
that swore she could not be who she wanted to be:
for she could, and she did, guided by a spirit
that was at once vulnerable and whole.
With her voice, words, hope, and courage as
her tools, today she is uninhibited in the wake of
censure, free in the face of stereotypes, resolute
in the journey towards breaking the walls and ceilings
that have held many a fellow traveller prisoner.
From black to white, she cherishes all the colours,
for they stand for equality and hope in a spectrum untorn.

Dancing in the embrace of poetry!

As the clouds weep…

Thought my sorrow was my own – 
for me to dance with the pain, all alone.
But the sky seems to have another plan:
As the clouds weep and the birds sing, 
the turmoil within is finding fellowship – 
the kind that strengthens each broken wing
to let it take flight despite any hardship, 
the kind that soothes even the darkest tone! 

The sky, the trees, and the rain dancing with my pain today.

Far beyond our reach!

Why do we not realise the power words hold
to wound, to bruise, to break the best
of resolves, the purest of bonds until all
that remains is a wordless plea for forgiveness –
a hope for redemption swirling amidst a tempest?!

Perhaps the ease with which we tend to grant
second chances blinds us to the glaring fact
that there is only so much we may seek to erase
till the walls we build become prisons, holding
what we believed to be unbreakable barely intact.

It is only when we run out of apologies
that we seem to understand they carry no weight
if we do not intend to never have to repeat
the words to heal the words that injured –
for promises once broken never do set straight.

When it feels like we have gone a step too far
to be forgiven for the words we wielded like a gun
without acknowledging that bullets are irreversible,
the loss of that which we failed to protect
eclipses all hope for hope like clouds do the sun.

How can we find the courage to break free
of the hopelessness unless we decide
to not surrender, to keep striving to forge
new gates in the walls of our own creation,
so we can endeavour to free what they hide?!

As we walk back into the gardens that were
once our sacred sanctuary, as our souls form
words not of apology or promise, but of honesty,
forgiveness that once seemed unattainable
carves a path for itself akin to sunlight after a storm.

Impossible though it seems, undeserved though
it feels, this forgiveness is a reminder
for us to never underestimate the might of words
to destroy, to forsake, to create, to embrace –
their ability to keep broken pieces together like a binder.

Even when the wounds have healed, the trust resewn,
the walls conquered, this forgiveness does teach
us not to ever take what we have for granted,
for we cannot rely on gates we may fail to build;
What if the walls end up far beyond our reach?!