Seeking Change : A Poem (2019)
2021-03-18 . Written by Sara
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.