Noor-Ul-Ain Sahi Poet Free verse

Rot

I’m afraid
I am rotten.

Not on the surface-
no, I learned early
how to look intact.
I learned how to smile
without cracking,
how to speak softly
so no one hears
the decay working underneath.

Rot is quiet.
It doesn’t announce itself.
It happens slowly,
patiently,
in places no one checks.

I worry there is something in me
that spoiled before it was ever loved.
Something that went bad
from waiting too long
in the dark.
Something that learned
how to survive neglect
but not how to stay whole.

People touch me
and pull their hands back
eventually.
They never say why.
They just sense it-
that faint wrongness,
that soft collapse behind the ribs,
like fruit bruised too deeply
to recover.

I try to be careful.
I try not to leak.
I wrap myself in kindness,
in humor,
in good behavior-
as if sweetness on the outside
might cancel out
what’s fermenting within.

But rot doesn’t disappear
because you are gentle.
It doesn’t stop
because you are trying.

I replay every loss
like evidence.
Every leaving.
Every almost-love
that stalled and spoiled.
I ask myself
what they smelled
that I couldn’t.

Maybe I stayed unopened too long.
Maybe I trusted the wrong warmth.
Maybe something essential in me
was never meant
to survive this air.

I am afraid I am rotten
because no matter how deeply I clean,
there is a sadness
that keeps resurfacing-
not sharp,
not dramatic,
just sour and persistent.

The kind that settles in the chest
and convinces you
this is who you’ve always been.
This is what happens
when something good
is left waiting
too long to be chosen.

I fear love will arrive,
finally,
and find me already ruined.
That it will press gently
and feel the give.
That it will apologize
with its eyes
and turn away.

So I keep myself closed.
I keep myself cool.
I pretend preservation
is the same as safety.

But at night,
when everything is quiet enough
to tell the truth,
I press my hand to my chest
and wonder-

was I always like this,
or did the world
teach me
how to spoil?

I’m afraid
I am rotten.

And more afraid still
that no one will ever tell me
I am not.

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