Medha Sreeya’s Three Poems

1. Hide and seek

I don’t hate the game though, of course, I don’t.

I remember exploring new places

where no one could find me,

Running out of new places to hide.

I recollect this weird fear in me of not being found.

I do remember the game though, of course, I do.

I remember the last time I played it

I guess it’s not fear of not being found

Maybe it’s fear of being forgotten

Maybe it’s about being hidden for too long

until people don’t care anymore

About them getting tired of calling my name

About getting too dark

About getting too quiet and people going home.

What if It’s too late before they remember that I was hiding under the blanket

What if I stop being scared of the knitted darkness

Isn’t it important to be scared?

Don’t we all search for a safe place when we are afraid?

Now that I am not,

will I ever go home?

Will they remember that I’m here?

Will they ever find me?

Will you?

2. Jane Austen says “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”

That night I walked out of the door and for the first time..

Leaving felt easy.

Not because I loved you less but because I loved you enough for me to not be able to survive it.

For me to not be able to write a poem ever again, because your voice made my words sound better every time they slipped out of the paper.

Tonight, I am erasing too many memories but you see, it doesn’t work that way

Cause my mom says I have a blessing and curse of remembering the tiniest details.

Yet somehow, I forgot what you sounded like when you woke up in the middle of the night

I forgot how I waited for occasions to write you a letter

Or how I tried writing you a last letter and

I said,

Dear love,

That’s all I got so far.

I’m going to be honest, it’s not often that I find myself learning how to unlearn.

How to carefully take off the stitches on the scars you left, without bleeding every word I wanted to tell you but they weren’t loud enough to reach your ears.

They say I talk a lot about syllables and hurting in the pit of my stomach but

I don’t talk about them anymore, I don’t know how to pronounce love without making it sound like a goodbye anymore

Nothing hurts the pit of my stomach anymore

My nights aren’t filled with planning on doing something for you that makes you smile from 280 miles away cause I can’t meet you.

I didn’t realise when my heart pounding became my alarm

Or when did my words become too quiet?

I remember when we first met and the last time I saw you.

You made it seem easy but you see

It doesn’t work that way,

So the next time you decide to visit, please bring me back the blank papers I left in your place,

I want to write you the last letter.

3. Where do unspoken words go

They say we learn to shape our words into sentences around 6 months after birth. Our tongues imitate the twists and turns of people around us while they utter words and our throats become mimes to the voices we hear.

Flash

We have learnt how to use words to get our work done, you are not old enough to understand where to stop the sentences so you keep talking until they fall asleep and then you go quiet. You start collecting every new word, needling them into a story! your first story, but you come home and no ear has space enough for it so you write them in paragraphs that fit in perfect rectangles.

You were told not to live in boxes but

Flash

You carve silence now. You crave for gaps in between sentences to breathe.

Your mouth becomes an old library, you refuse to open it unless there is something momentous needs to be said.

But, where do unspoken words go?

Do they hide under the tongue or do they not even reach the throat

Do they linger around the heart

They say some things are better left unsaid, so I guess they made their home in my lungs to help me breathe better.

But tonight, I wish I could say everything I wanted to but had to swallow them and watch them eat my insides.

But I could, would you listen to me?

Would you?

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