New | Poetry | Transactions | Pain | Strength | Battle | Staring Back | Little Deaths | Admiration | Something's Broken | Abhishek Anicca

Cafe Terrace at Night, Van Gogh

Transactions

 

Late at night

I heard laughter down the street

and wondered whose silence

had it been exchanged for?

 

 

Pain

 

and then there was us

me and my body, alone

in a room full of dancing people

 

 

Strength

 

Two middle aged men

walked to my bed

in a hospital

 

undressed me

laughed for a while

before changing my diaper

 

I let them have their joke

 

Battle

 

Today,

I didn't change the world

I came back with shame

I wanted to curl up in my bed

I felt unwanted, unloved, un-liked

 

Today,

I mumbled a quiet prayer

I summoned no god nor human

I petitioned the depths of my dignity

I screamed silently; I exist, I exist, I exist.

 

 

Staring Back

 

One day

I will smirk back at my gazer

I will tell them about my talent

I will count down my achievements

I will kill them with confidence

I will show them my strength

 

One day,

I will not be broken by a stranger.

 

Little deaths

 

We misunderstood smog

for love:

 

Not everything that forces us

to hold our breath

 

is worth dying for.

 

 

Admiration

 

I am lost midway

through your poem

     disinterested in moving

 

                        Forgive me

                if I never tell you

               how beautiful it is

 

Something's broken

 

I stopped talking about the nation

when it seeped into my room

listening to my conversations

 

What else can do you around

old lovers who have changed?

 

Bio: Abhishek Anicca is a writer, poet and researcher. He identifies as a person with locomotor disability and chronic illness which shape his creative endeavours.