Ashok Jahagirdar Poet Rhyme

What I Send

No one told me what to write.
No box to check, no borrowed light.
They just said: *You. Your words. Your way.*
And I paused. Then laughed. Then started to pray—

not to gods, but to the ache in my chest,
to the half-finished line I buried last fest,
to the poem I tore up for sounding too strange,
to the voice I muted to fit in their range.

I remember the years I wrote for applause,
trimming my wildness, filing my claws.
I wrote what they wanted. Polite. Small. Tame.
Every poem a whisper. Never a flame.

But something kept cracking the floor of that cage—
a rhythm, a rupture, a slow-building rage.
Not anger. Just truth that refused to stay down.
A need to be heard without wearing a crown.

So here I am, messy, loud, and slow,
not sure where I’m going, but willing to go.
I write about rain that tastes like goodbye,
about joy so sharp it makes me cry.
I write about silence my father kept,
about dreams I’ve kissed and never slept.
I write about shame like a coat I outgrew,
about people I loved who outgrew me too.
I write about the word *enough*—
how it hunted me, how it got rough,
how one day I stopped running its race
and found it already living in my face.

I write about mornings that taste like rust,
about learning to trust when trust felt unjust.
I write about the version of me who froze,
about the door she finally chose.

I don't know if they'll call it "best."
But this time, I refuse to second-guess.
I'm not sending a masterpiece carved from dread—
I'm sending the words from my own table instead.
The ones I scribbled in the dark.
The ones that left a visible mark.
The ones that made my hands shake.
The ones I stayed up too late to make.

Let the judges read. Let the world applaud.
I've already received the strangest reward:
the moment I stopped performing my worth,
I remembered why I came to earth.

Because being myself?
That's the whole damn theme.
The contest began when I stopped chasing esteem.
No trophy, no title, no numbered place
could match the relief of showing my face—

unfiltered, unpolished, uncaged, unkind
only to the lies I left behind.
So here it is. My offering. My flight.
Not perfect. But mine.
And finally light.

I’m already free.
I already wrote.
This poem already gave me back my throat.

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