ALS NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 15 Prompt: Be as kind to yourself as you are to others
In our daily lives, we are so involved and influenced by the actions and lives of other people around us that we forget to feel good about ourselves. When was the last time you appreciated yourself?
Let’s do that today by weaving a poem that acts as a reminder to be as kind to ourselves as we are to our friends and family.
Poem: Are you your own nemesis?
The walls that you’ve built around yourself,
So none can peek into your soul,
Or see from where you are bleeding,
Or even notice that you are not perfect (as they deem)–
Those walls, you need to pull down,
For they are suffocating you now,
Like a prison you’ve caged yourself in!
For that shallow boundary that you’ve erected for others,
Has become an inextricable part of your identity,
An entire mansion of expectations they’ve created around that,
At the cost of corpse of your wishes!
And you? What have you done?
You graciously offered them your body, heart and soul
To tear apart as they pleased!
You keep offering yourself in the name of duties,
Or social diktats that restrain your dreams.
Listen to your voice that wants to scream,
But, boy! How you silenced your own larynx,
At the slightest directive from those upstream!
Do you see their apathy on pretext of love?
How you energize them, and they suck your energy?
Why are you so unkind to yourself?
What you praise in others, in yourself can’t you see?
Would you desert the ones you love in times of need?
Then how can you overlook your own heart’s plea?
Like rustling of dry leaves in Fall breeze,
The sobbing of your heart shrieks in your being,
But you don’t pay any heed!
You seem to me like your own nemesis,
For I’ve never seen you with yourself at peace,
I find you struggling with your own presence,
Do you think some blunder the Creator did?
The Creator, who orchestrated the entire Universe,
Should He have placed you in place of someone else?
Would you THEN have been kind to yourself? Would you THEN have been happy?
©Vandana Bhasin
15.04.2024
