#versifiedbygauri

Mother, I did the dishes

Scrubbed them clean

Until my hands reeked of nothing but soap and regret.

As if those shining plates

could guarantee your forgiveness

for every test i took and failed,

ones that i lost to helplessness of my young age.

Last night

Your voice crashed with the door of your room

opening and closing for 16-

no, 18 times.

Accusing voices of you and father

fighting a war older than me

yet, no flag waved in sight for twenty-five years.

You picked a cheater,

called him a human,

dressed him as your husband

in front of others,

fed him forgiveness and love,

gulping his lies down your throat

All that, just for the show.

But he was just infidelity in person

behind closed doors.

Mother, I needed someone to fight for me,

maybe, I needed you.

He kept betraying

and you kept forgetting,

choosing a monster over me,

the one, only you couldn't see.

You saved your marriage,

perhaps that is good,

perhaps that is what adults are supposed to do.

But mother-

I was just a child,

not a wife,

and i needed saving too.

I am the angry youngest, the least of your lot,

A shadow in the corner, the daughter you forgot.

The unlovable echo, your backup plan,

A placeholder friend when no one else can.

Oversensitive? Call it what you will,

I’ve swallowed your words, and I’m choking still.

A mirrorball, spinning, reflecting your needs,

Shattered in silence while your ego feeds.

The forgotten birthday, the name left unsaid,

The child you need only when you’re in dread.

I am the backburner, the ember that glows,

The burnt-out daughter nobody knows.

Yet I am the crutch when you start to fall,

The one who answers to every call.

Your least favorite child, but your constant shield,

The one you abandon, yet refuse to yield.

So let me burn, let the ashes rise,

The anger I carry will crack the skies.

I’ll rebuild myself from this ruin you made,

The daughter who stayed, but never obeyed.

She brought her heart along,

naive, full of hope, vulnerable,

And I took mine,

fragmented, ruptured,

yearning for unrequited love.

We both ordered the same drink,

yet somehow hers

tasted better than mine,

less sorrowful,

Mine, much more disheartening,

served with a slice of regret.

"Did we find what we were looking for?",

she asks.

Not certain what to tell her,

if we found and lost it,

or never found it at all,

"No", I replied.

"We will", says,

trying to console me,

without even knowing how much

damage has already been done,

The little girl I was.

I see the light in her eyes fading,

her mind contemplating,

if she really deserved any of it.

She looks down on me,

not with sorrow, but guilt.

Her coffee is now equally distasteful.

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.

is a feminist until

she falls in love

with a man."

while our coats are drenched in the rain,

in a quiet cafe, like we did before,

is it possible to cross paths just once more?

To speak of the life that's unfolded ever since,

to tell you all that's been since you left,

the battle I fought all alone,

the years I've survived, the tears I've shed.

Will you find me worthy despite these scars,

after the battles fought under distant stars?

could love endure where time has laid it's claim,

or I'll just remain a shadow once again?

Will you stay this time, or drift once more,

leaving me waiting by the coffee shop door,

the steam from my cup curling like your whispered name,

a shadow flickers, but never reaches where I stand, all alone.

Sometimes,

my mother lets slip a thread of her childhood

between bites of breadsticks,

a harmless anecdote,

like sunlight flickering through a crack.

She tells me of nights under quiet skies,

of a doll with one missing eye,

or the sound of her father’s laugh

echoing against thick concrete wall.

Her voice carries no weight,

just the ease of memory brushed off like dust.

But I sit frozen,

caught in the silence that follows,

as if the air has shifted

to cradle something fragile

I cannot name.

How much of her life lives in shadows?

How many rooms of her heart

have I never stepped into?

She once held worlds before I existed,

and they are slipping away.

The girl she was

sits across the table,

her stories cradled in my mother's hands.

I wish I could reach out,

hold them before they scatter,

press them into my palms,

learn the shape of her sadness

before it is too late.

But I only nod,

watch her smile and change the subject,

while something in me shatters quietly,

because I realize, again,

that I will never truly know

the woman who gave me life.

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.