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Seeking Change : A Poem (2019)

2021-03-18 . Written by Sara

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Maybe what we need

is not some great constellation

to glisten out of the shadows

for us to make a change.

After all,

which mere mortal—

With hair going grey

and knees trembling,

Has the patience to wait,

a thousand years

For the so-called blessings

born from the stars’ girth

To finally have their soles

touching the clay of the earth?

 

It’s funny how we don’t seek change

Till our problems begin clawing at our brains

After years of stabbing our hearts,

And rotting our skins till nothing remains.

Only then does it dawn to our feeble minds,

That they’ve been feeding on our traumas,

for so long they don’t need knives of any kind.

 

It’s strange how we never notice

The ebbing and flowing of warnings.

Our dreams remind us often

About the layers of emotions,

building one over the other.

And about the flood waiting—

outside Sanity’s door,

higher than ever before.

All she ever did to prepare

was to pray her walls never broke down,

And only when the suffocating air

gobbles up any remaining ounce of hope,

Does she ever dare to ask in despair

Whether we knew anyone who’d like to help.

 

And then we run our fingertips

across bookshelves,

Looking for a human to whom

we’ll not listen with our ears.

Our eyes love being glued—

To pretty little symbols

resting on the surface

of thin sheets made

of wood pulp with grace

They have no faces but they can speak

and turn us into repunzels with ease.

 

This one time is an exception;

The voice resonating off

the pages of the book

wants us to take

a sip of reality.

She keeps on telling us

that our problems are nothing but sugar cubes!

And a cup of reassurance

would dissolve our worries and assumes.

 

But how can it be so,

When each of us have our own realities?

We’ve been sipping them everyday

only to water the roots of our problems.

Our problems are more like trees,

and not like sugar cubes in teas.

Sugar cubes don’t have roots and leaves.

 

Shall we find a new reality?

(Maybe that’s what she meant)

Seeking a new reality sounds like

Choosing a new colour palette

What a seemingly simple idea

till you have to force your eyes

to see yellow skies the next day.

 

I do wonder whether there’s a way

to erase those problems completely.

If they grew on our skins,

We could’ve asked snakes

to help us shred them away.

But they’re like oceans,

And I dreamt of a flood

striking my house today.