A truth, a lie

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It’s funny how days

Are not days anymore

But tired hopeless hours

Piled on each other

Faces, are not faces anymore

But expressions of the same

Thought unsaid.

Eyes wander through and to

Colours of humans and one blue

Hands of the dead undead

Deep in my chest

Burst through, branching

Towards the ultimate good.

I have exhausted myself

I don’t feel myself

In this jungle

Of multi-faceted friends

I still, try and try

Because I believe

All actions come back to me

A truth, a lie.

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~insight07

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Copyright ©Devika Todi. All rights reserved.

Tribe

The horror of talking to humans;
An eagle perched on my shoulders,
Its claws digging into my skin.
I try to relate a thought with a thought
A feeling with a feeling-
Try to gulp down the dread that grips my skin.
Dealing with my own tribe terrifies me.
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Then, I start thinking
Really start thinking.
Dress in empathy, and dance with new feet.
I think of the animals who have lost their freedom to humans
Their body, a means to their survival
A mind reduced to productivity that they can’t understand,
Or maybe they can?
I think of the plants that get cut into half
Because their growth is a disturbance to cars.
Wheels keep on running, we keep on running too.
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While I can hate humans and their system,
They are still me.
What of this whole world, that is not for me?
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~insight07
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Copyright ©Devika Todi. All rights reserved.

Fear

My Fear and I sit side by side.
A tree growing on me- it sinks in my chest
Roots and leaves crowd the little space left
Between my heart and teeth.
Bones and organs and blood- they are mine.
This Fear, it feels more like mine.

I often cry these days-
Tears trickle down and are absorbed-
This plant grows by 2 inches.
My height is still the same. I am an adult- 8 years old.
The only growth that can now be achieved is horizontal.

It’s difficult to not nourish Fear.
It listens far more intently than any other.
Yet, I try to talk to it in terms that are kind.
A branch is bravery. Another is effort.
A mirror in front- we reflect.
Purple flowers bloom. A spider swings to and fro.

Fear does not sit inside of me now.
It has grown beyond me. We are friends.
Sometimes, I look into its eyes-
I stare back at myself.

This Fear has a name. But I don’t want to call it that just yet.

~insight07

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Copyright ©Devika Todi. All rights reserved.

Pool

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The day has exhausted itself on my fingertips

Conversations do not slip from my tongue anymore

I am flowing in this chlorinated pale water

A pool that has more humans than water.

I wash my fingers so that they no longer smell of me

But a clean artificial lemon smell trapped in this plastic bottle.

The darkness of my room is breathing

More loudly than my breaths measure

I feel it on the pale of my neck,

As sweat pools, in this humid summer.

I dream of swimming in pools of different sizes

Different shapes and different depths.

In that same costume, with my eyes wide open

I look at the deep blue turn dark,

Dark, dark

Till I have essence of no one, but me

On my fingertips that smell of me.

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~insight07 •

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Copyright ©Devika Todi. All rights reserved.