#plathora

Everyone’s five-year plan has

rings on fingers,

names on doors,

a house where sunlight pours in

on love that stayed.

Mine?

Mine’s stitched with 'what ifs'-

If we ever break up,

if I ever breathe right again,

if every damn morning

the silence doesn’t echo your name.

They talk about promotions,

honeymoons in June,

cribs painted blue or pink.

I talk myself out of texting you

on days I can't feel anything

but you.

Maybe I’m oversensitive—

but only because I’ve seen

how fast love can go

from always

to maybe

to nothing.

I love him.

God, I love him.

Enough to build a whole future

on the shaky ground of "what if."

Enough to pray

I never have to survive

the thing I love most.

And that’s my five-year plan—

not to win,

but if I lose,

just to still be breathing.

of collecting things

Stamps, coins, bottles or pictures,

I collect grief

felt enormously in your slightest absence

Sewing them as buttons

into my wedding dress.

I Walk down the aisle estranged,

With a bouquet in one hand

And my broken heart in the other,

But i don't see you standing at the end.

The musician plays our favourite song

Yet you're not there to hum it with me

I look for you at every table,

in every corner,

You're nowhere to be seen.

It is my wedding day,

I am standing there,

Still, in a wedding dress,

With another man by my side,

yet i only thought of you

when i said, "I do".

The realization hit when he kissed me,

Held my hand,

and said his vows.

I did it again,

My dress turned from crimson to white,

my heart shed the last illusion i had of us.

I'm sorry, Mom, for hiding from you,

When I couldn't speak, when I turned away.

You asked, but I stayed quiet,

Fearing you'd see the mess I’d made.

I thought you’d always understand,

But I shut you out instead.

Now you’ve stopped asking,

And I’m left with all I never said.

Now I've hidden so much inside,

I don’t know how to let it out.

I miss you, Mom, more than I can say,

But I can’t confess, not today.

And every day I regret the space,

Between us that I made so wide.

I wish I could turn back time,

And tell you what I keep inside.

half-written letter—

I paused

at the window

where spring

was trying

to push through

cracked sidewalks,

suddenly

I missed

the version of myself

I meant to become.

-Gauri.

In muted stillness my voice remains sealed

Beneath a grin where emotions are concealed

They view me gentle so tender so clear

An innocent soul with nothingness to fear.

Yet they can't perceive the tempests within

The battles unwon the chaos the roar

They assume my muteness means I’m void of delight

That happiness simply blooms in the whispers of night.

I’m quiet so they presume I’m tranquil

Unaware of the struggles concealed

They believe I’m lost in a delicate trance

While my heart is a tempest yearning to dance.

I long for their gaze to pierce through my façade

To behold the truth in my silence so broad

For stillness isn’t always a balm for the soul

Sometimes it’s where the echoes take toll.

So here I linger calm and composed

Bearing the burdens that few have exposed

Yet in this stillness I’ll nurture my voice

but only two months since we've been meeting a lot,

which is accidentally though.

But when I miss my classes, it's not so sudden running into you outside the room no. 9,

amidst the corridor.

Since I've been sitting there for hours.

But I think it's all been worth it,

Although you have no idea that I exist,

Do you?

And I think the way you see me,

will never match the level of

me looking at you.

I was so busy in dancing around the fact that you saw me,

I never realized that you never really looked at me.

Everytime we had an eye contact,

it was because I forced myself into your sight.

Hardly did I listen,

when they tried to tell me

It's not right.

I smiled and smiled at you

Until my eyes were full of tears.

And it was in that moment, I knew,

That those tears were most real.

Sometimes I write broken words that turn into a poetry,

Sometimes a verse that doesn't even make any sense.

Although it's never intended to be revealed to anyone,

I wish one day you will read all of them.

We now have a spot,

I call it "Our place"

I've always waited for you there,

But you never really came.

And when we match our outfits unintentionally,

I call it a 'sign of the universe'.

Knowing well that you didn't even notice

and it's just my feelings for you that don't reverse.

I tell them, sometimes, that the pain is good for my muse,

But there are times when I wish I could write about 'love' too.

I did everything to get just a glimpse of you.

I held onto the knife that you touched so tightly,

I paced the corridor that connected our classes all the time so effortlessly,

That earlier when all I ever wanted, was this thing to be over,

now I would choose here, than anywhere to be.

And then it wouldn't always be about heartbreak,

it wouldn't have to be.

For all it will ever take for me to change the genre,