Unclean

 I kept taking off my skin, 

Layer after layer, I peeled it off to feel clean, 

But the imprint of his lecherous touch remained strong,

All I could see was blood and flesh, pain and fresh agony. 

I kept looking at my pain, wondering if I deserved it

Longing for it to heal and grow new skin, 

Skin that was pure and pristine.

I set his hands on fire in anger

I saw him burning alive wreathing and screaming, 

Even though I couldn't hear his screams in my head, 

I knew he had caused himself pain, I wanted nothing to do with his life of sin.

Yet I remained alone in my fight

I had baggage, not a clean slate

As if I made a mistake by being weak 

I forgave myself but did you forgive me?

I was young, naive and trusting

And I couldn't fight back 

Yet when I told you my story, which one of you held my hands

It's nature , only the strong are rewarded in the wild 

So I hid my story and became one with all

Yet something inside me remained alive and raw 

And I kept looking for someone to accept it and kiss it 

And say it's okay 

But no one like that came my way,

The wait was endless

May be it's about breathing and accepting my life.

About being lonely and letting the pain stay.

May be I don't understand this fully, 

But I know there will be no more peeling.

This is me - flawed, scarred and full of love. 

If only you would sometimes sit still with my pain.

In Another Life

A cozy kitchen dining table where I am comfortably sitting and watching a beautiful garden. I am not moving. I am not worried about anything. Just about food and shopping groceries and keeping the house comfortable for the people I love. I am loved and treated with respect and hugged and told I am safe.

I am doing good. I am doing well. I rest on the table and do my knitting and feed the cat and feel fearless about my health. All I have to do is go through all the rooms and make sure they are clean and well organised. When he comes home I have a smile on my face because I know he won't demand anything. He will just sit on the sofa and insist that I join him and give me a gift or something. I just sit and hold the gift with a smile, feeling pampered and cared for. I want to do whatever I can, everything in my capacity to make this man happy, to bring a smile to his face, to support him to do whatever it is he tries to do and be his power, his strength.

I am okay with anonymity. I am okay with being noticed only by him. I don't care. He is my everything. We sit and enjoy a warm drink. May be soup. And then we hold hands and stare into each other's eyes. He says he doesn't want to get up. He doesn't want to change anything. He just wants to sit there forever holding my hands like that. We sit like that. We keep sitting like that till the sun sets and the birds start chirping and hurrying back to their nests and we can hear crickets chirping and the street lights going ON. We know it's dark now and we have nowhere to go. We don't have to part. But we don't want to move. We just want to stay like this forever. Just stay. And smile. We are finally happy. Our heaven. 

What if?

There are versions of me. One version is trying to be a musician, but another is in a lab somewhere studying chromosomes and mutations. And yet another is a psychotherapist helping people find peace and healing in their lives.

But there are some versions that I wonder if I could still live. What if I spend an year becoming an art curator or an event manager stopping my practice completely and just being on the field helping artists I like find a platform to perform and display their work? What if I spend another year just reading books in a shed somewhere on a mountain and writing in the early morning hours, coming back after an year with a fully written novel?

What if there is also a version of me that marries and becomes a dutiful wife and spends her years without ambition but lots of love for her husband and children and a secret room kept aside just to steal moments of her love for music when no one is watching? What if I could take years off from my present life to experience different ones and then come back and work on my music again and make something different. What if?