Palak Shrivastava | + Follow Poet |
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I Killed Myself

On a footpath of a street she lay,
It was dark outside her and inside.
Bruised hands, cut lips, dying soul,
She didn’t remember how much she had cried.

At the time he had left her and gone
And she hadn’t been ready for a goodbye.
But to him what had mattered was his career,
And she was what he called a pastime.

And how much she had cried at the time
Her parents said they were ashamed,
To have a daughter like her in this world
Who couldn’t ever keep up their name.

And cried at the time she had no one,
No one who would understand her plight.
Because everyone thought they had enough worries
And hers was maybe something simple and light.

And as she lay, almost unconscious
With all the turmoil in her head,
She decided that it was time now,
To lay herself to eternal rest. 

To put an end to all the misery,
To put an end to all the pain.
To put an end to the cyclone inside her,
And never ever let it rise again.

“And that lonely night, I killed myself
I killed that girl who could see no reason to live.
And gave birth to a new life
Who had so much more to give.

I was born a girl with no parents
And a girl who had fallen for no one.
I was born without anything but the torn clothes I had,
And the desire to become someone.”

A round of applause followed and people cheered,
“I had no one by me, no one knew where I had gone.
But don’t you think it’s a different thrill
When you’re making it happen all alone?”

“But Ma’am, that day you had all the reasons to give up,
To end your life then and there.
What kept you alive that lonely night?”
A question came up from the questionnaire.

“When we hate someone to the core,
Don’t we just kill them in our heads?
Stop thinking about their existence,
Like uprooting a weed from a garden.

I was the person I hated the most that night,
For falling weak, playing dumb and expecting,
And hence I killed myself, uprooted myself
But remembered to bring alive a new human being.

Everyone has a choice either to die or start from scratch,
Either to rest in peace or stay in peace with our minds,
And I just chose the path not trodden by many
I took the road less travelled by.”

A roar of applause, “Bravo!”, “God bless”,
were showered as she came down the dais,
The CEO of the established firm then autographed 
The books held by her many admirers.

She wiped her eyes that night and looked up at the stars,
It was a night like this when God had given her the strength.
To take the road less travelled by,
And that had indeed made all the difference.

Copyright © Palak Shrivastava | Year Posted 2017

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