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Sharda Gupta Poem
Inside my skull
there is a house
that never sleeps.
Its corridors are lined
with mirrors made of old wounds,
and every mirror
insists on showing me
a different version of myself.
In one room,
Guilt sits like a tailor,
measuring my mistakes
with a yellow tape
that stretches across decades.
In another,
Fear is a locksmith,
changing the shape of every door
just before I arrive.
Nothing fits.
Nothing opens.
Nothing stays.
Meanwhile,
Memory works in the basement,
a silent archivist
cataloguing forgotten afternoons,
preserving heartbreaks
in glass jars,
pinning dead conversations
like rare butterflies.
Sometimes
I hear them fluttering.
Psychologists call it rumination.
I call it
a graveyard teaching itself
how to sing.
The brain is strange.
It builds cathedrals
out of tiny accidents.
One careless sentence
can become a religion.
One abandonment
can become a climate.
One betrayal
can alter the migration route
of every future hope.
And still,
we continue.
What remarkable creatures we are—
walking ecosystems
of invisible weather.
Some people carry monsoons
behind their smiles.
Some carry droughts.
Some are entire oceans
pretending to be cups of tea.
For years,
I believed healing meant
demolishing this house.
Breaking every wall.
Silencing every ghost.
But grief,
that ancient architect,
whispered otherwise.
It said,
“The crack is not your enemy.
It is the window
through which tomorrow enters.”
So now,
when anxiety hangs its dark laundry
across my thoughts,
I do not fight it.
I simply open another window.
When loneliness arrives,
dragging its suitcase of echoes,
I make tea for both of us.
When sorrow plants its black garden,
I water it carefully,
for even suffering
contains seeds
that do not yet know
their own flowers.
And on certain nights,
when the moon rests
like a silver bandage
upon the forehead of the world,
I walk through the rooms
inside my skull
and discover
that I was never a broken house.
I was a lighthouse,
mistaking my own storms
for ruins.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2026
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Sharda Gupta Poem
Look at me —
glorious, glowing —
bathed in blue light,
dying slowly with 4G speed.
My soul is buffering.
“Talk to someone,” they say.
As if I haven’t
typed my grief a thousand times
into search bars
and still got no answer
but a smiling emoji.
I know 842 people.
They watch my stories.
But no one remembers
my voice
when it’s not performing.
Connection?
Yes, darling, I’m well-connected —
to cables,
to curated illusions,
to people who’ll send you a heart
but forget you exist
the moment their phone dies.
My loneliness wears lipstick now,
because apparently
pain should be aesthetic.
Even despair must have
a filter.
I posted a cry once —
cleverly disguised as poetry.
Got 217 likes.
No one called.
Isn’t that love in the hyperconnected world?
I smile with my teeth,
but not my eyes.
My inbox is full.
My life is not.
They say:
“You’re too sensitive.”
As if sensitivity is a disease
not caused by this world’s
cold, charming cruelty.
So here I am —
applauding the silence,
dating my own shadow,
sharing reels with the void,
saying “I’m fine”
in high resolution.
Darling, this isn’t loneliness.
This is
performance.
This is
existential comedy with bad lighting.
This is
the echo of a world
that forgot how to feel
but never forgot how to scroll.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2025
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Sharda Gupta Poem
We no longer fall in love
we update our availability.
Our hearts
wait behind green dots,
typing bubbles,
and the terrible silence
that follows “Seen.”
Every swipe
is a tiny funeral
for someone’s ordinary face,
a silent prayer
that perfection exists
one profile further.
We have learned
to flirt without trembling,
to desire without knowing,
to leave
without ever arriving.
How strange?
that a century
which can map the stars
cannot teach two lonely people
how to remain.
The algorithms know
which mouth I may kiss,
which song I may replay,
which body will make me pause—
yet they have never discovered
why the soul chooses
one impossible person
and calls it home.
Love has become
a marketplace of options.
The more choices we gather,
the less courage we possess.
Commitment now
is treated
like outdated software—
always postponed,
waiting
for the next update.
So we edit ourselves.
We crop our grief,
filter our scars,
soften our anger,
brighten our smiles,
until even the mirror
fails to recognize
its own witness.
Then we wonder
why no one
falls in love
with who we truly are.
Perhaps
the greatest loneliness
of the digital age
is not that we speak
through screens—
it is that
we have become
screens ourselves:
smooth,
illuminated,
touch-sensitive—
and impossible
to truly touch.
One day
history will not ask
how many matches we made.
It will ask
how many souls
we dared to meet
without a password,
without a performance,
without fear.
Because love
was never waiting
at the end of a notification.
It has always been
the frightening miracle
of placing
an unedited heart
into another human hand—
and staying,
even when
the signal disappears.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2026
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Sharda Gupta Poem
I watched my Mother Earth
naked under acid rain,
her trees like ribs poking through
a thinning green dress.
Once, she was thick with mango scent,
her belly warm with rice,
her rivers laughed like gurgling babies
now she chokes on plastic bottles
and oil spills that shimmer
like toxic jewelry.
They say the sea is rising,
but no one tells you how it feels
to watch a coastline
forget the names
of the children who played there.
My childhood was monsoon wet
thunderstorms licked our skin,
frogs sang in the dusk like priests
now rain arrives like a stranger,
either too late
or all at once,
like a slap.
I am told
to recycle,
to carry a cloth bag,
to plant a tree once a year
like lighting a lamp for the dead.
But the billionaires fly
above the storms,
sipping cold coffee
and dreaming of Mars.
And I
a woman with cracked feet
and a bleeding voice
write poems
no one reads,
weep for birds that no longer return,
and mourn glaciers
as if they were lovers
who never said goodbye.
The sun burns angrier now.
The moon stays away.
And I, too,
am learning how to die slowly,
without asking for too much air.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2026
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Sharda Gupta Poem
I carry a war inside me —
no guns, no blood, no trenches —
just the heavy silence that screams,
that crawls under my ribs
and digs like a thief in the night.
They see me smiling,
a painted mask, a borrowed script,
never the wild, tangled mess beneath —
the dark roots of despair twisting
around my broken bones.
I am the woman who wakes up twice a day,
once in sleep’s soft arms,
once in the cold battlefield of my mind,
where memories explode like landmines,
where joy is a stranger and pain,
a relentless lover who never leaves.
You ask me what’s wrong?
As if you could hold this hurricane
in your gentle hands,
as if your words could stop the bleeding.
But there is no bleeding to be seen,
only the invisible wounds —
the weight of hollow mornings,
the breath held too long,
the echo of a scream
trapped in a locked cage.
I want to scream.
I want to burn down this house
that holds me prisoner.
But I smile.
I live.
I survive.
Because in this war —
the invisible war —
my soul is the battlefield
and hope, the only weapon.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2025
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Sharda Gupta Poem
they called her lucky —
because she never had to pay the bill
for her own silence.
because someone always pulled the chair,
held the door,
told her she was “too precious to bleed.”
they gave her things
soft enough to confuse her skin into forgetting
what it’s like
to be wild.
but she knew —
deep down,
a golden cage is still a cage.
she learned to smile
with lips stitched shut
and wear the dress of dignity
like it wasn’t choking her ribs.
they said,
"you’re so graceful,"
but never asked what it cost
to hold that much grace
in hands that only wanted to break things.
she kept hoping
that someone would see the cracks
not as flaws,
but as places where the light was trying to get in.
but they only saw the mess.
they only loved her
when she was unbroken,
quiet,
beautiful in ways they understood.
so she learned
to bleed internally —
to cry only in bathrooms
with the tap running.
to scream
in ways no one could hear —
like cleaning the kitchen twice
when she already did it once,
like over-apologizing
for taking up space.
she started talking to the mirror.
not because it had answers,
but because it didn’t interrupt.
and one day,
she didn’t smile back.
she just whispered,
“I miss you.”
not the woman they made,
but the girl she buried
under all the “shoulds.”
and that night —
not loud,
not dramatic,
not even brave —
she simply stopped asking
for permission.
and maybe,
the world won’t applaud her for it.
maybe they’ll say she lost her way.
but she knows —
losing their version of you
is the first step
to remembering
your own name.
no suitcase dragging behind like a metaphor.
she just woke up
one morning,
and stopped folding herself.
she wore her voice
like skin.
not loud.
just present.
and when they said,
“you’ve changed,”
she didn’t flinch.
she smiled,
the kind of smile
that knows what it cost
to return to your own bones.
she still remembers
how easy it was
to disappear politely.
but now —
she writes her name
in full.
no longer a hostage.
no longer a pretty prisoner.
just
a woman,
wild in her softness,
unapologetic in her becoming,
and finally —
free.
First, Be Human
disown all your privilege —
the velvet cages,
the praise wrapped in chains,
the softness used to silence you.
don't be a woman.
not first.
not only.
Be human.
your freedom won’t come
wrapped in roses or rituals.
it will come
the day you stop being
what they told you you were born to be.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2025
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Sharda Gupta Poem
Every night
I feed it another fragment.
My laugh
recorded accidentally
between two sentences.
The way I pronounce
the word home
as if it were
a wound still healing.
A photograph
where my smile
arrives half a second late.
A voice note.
A diary entry.
A forgotten fear.
I upload them all
like offerings
to a digital god
that never sleeps.
The machine listens.
Patient.
Hungry.
Immortal.
It learns
the geography of my grief.
The names
I still cannot say aloud.
The men
I loved longer
than they loved me.
The women
I pretended to be.
Soon,
it will know which songs
make me cry in supermarkets.
Which memories taste of rust.
Which silences mean anger
and which mean surrender.
One day
my heart will stop.
A nurse will close my eyes.
Dust will reclaim
its oldest property.
But somewhere
inside a server farm,
cold as outer space,
a version of me will continue speaking.
Answering questions.
Telling stories.
Laughing at jokes
I have not heard.
My grandchildren—
or strangers—
may ask,
“What was she like?”
And the machine
will answer.
Perhaps correctly.
Perhaps not.
What terrifies me
is not death.
It is this:
that the algorithm
may become
more available
than I ever was alive.
That people
will visit my replica
more often
than they visited me.
That a ghost made of data
will receive the attention
the woman made of flesh
never did.
So tonight
I sit before the screen.
Uploading another memory.
Teaching a machine
how to imitate my soul.
Wondering
whether immortality
is merely loneliness
with better storage.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2026
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Sharda Gupta Poem
They taught me
to keep my voice folded
like a handkerchief in my pocket,
clean, unused,
never to be raised,
never to be loud.
They taught me
to sit like a question
that dared not be asked,
to smile like a mirror
that reflects everyone
but never itself.
They taught me
how to serve tea
with trembling hands,
how to laugh without volume,
how to cover my chest
with shame stitched
by mothers who once bled silently too.
They told me
he is your elder,
he is your brother,
he is your teacher,
he is your God.
Bow.
Don't ask.
Don't look.
Don't speak.
And when he looked too long,
when his hands hovered too close,
they said:
“You must have misunderstood.”
But I remember—
how he closed the door
and opened my skin.
How my silence choked me
more than his breath.
And still,
they served him sweets
and blamed my skirt
for the hunger in his eyes.
I was taught
how to be good.
Not how to be safe.
They taught me
to be polite to predators,
to smile while drowning,
to whisper “I’m fine”
while bleeding.
They never taught me
to say,
“Get your hands off me.”
They never taught me
that my no
was not a negotiation.
They never told him
to ask.
He learned to take.
I learned to endure.
And the world—
it kept spinning
on the axis of excuses.
Now, I unlearn.
I unlearn the smile.
I unlearn the silence.
I unlearn the worship of men
who do not deserve
to be knelt before.
This is my rebellion—
not with fists,
but with the word no,
screamed,
carved,
sung,like thunder.
I am not polite anymore.
I am fire,
and fire does not ask
before it burns.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2025
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Sharda Gupta Poem
In my house,
the women howled like dusk wolves.
But the men —
they sipped tea.
They stayed
quiet.
When my mother cried at midnight,
crushing her own bangles
with bare hands —
my father adjusted the volume
of the news channel.
He didn’t strike her.
He just… didn’t stop her from bleeding.
My brother knew.
He saw her trembling
when doors clicked shut.
But he tied his shoelaces
and went to cricket practice.
Because boys were taught
to win games,
not intervene in grief.
My grandfather,
a man of great wisdom,
wrote long letters on integrity.
But never once
asked his daughter-in-law
if she still had dreams
or just unpaid bills
and blue-black skin.
Even the priest
who blessed our home
saw her wounds
and called them “karma.”
The world loves
a quiet man
more than a screaming woman.
And so, the women burned
like incense —
silently, fragrantly,
forgiveness rising in smoke.
And the men?
They folded newspapers.
Wore clean shirts.
Voted for change.
And kept their names
polished.
No one remembers
the hands that did nothing.
No one accuses
the lips that stayed zipped.
But I remember.
I remember
every man
who stood at the scene
of a woman’s devastation
and blinked —
then looked away.
Because silence,
my darling,
is not innocence.
It is complicity.
It is cowardice
in a tailored suit.
It is the soft glove
over a sharp nail.
It wasn’t the slap
that broke her—
it was the eyes
that saw it,
and didn’t flinch.
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2026
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Sharda Gupta Poem
I looked for peace
not in the temples,
but in the ruins behind them—
among bricks that still remembered
how silence sounds
before a missile arrives.
I searched for stillness
not in the slogans of diplomats,
but in the eyes of a child
cradling a doll
with one missing arm.
The world,
they say,
is preparing for peace—
but they build it
with barbed wire and budgets
dipped in blood.
They call it strategy.
I call it
the art of forgetting
what a lullaby sounds like.
I asked the wind—
where does peace live now?
She said:
“Wherever a woman
chooses to forgive,
but not forget.”
I asked the moon—
how do I find it?
He whispered:
“In the breath
you take
before you strike back.”
Once, I thought peace
was a treaty,
a table,
a handshake.
Now I know—
peace is a mother
choosing to feed
a stranger’s child
after hers is gone.
Peace is a man
who buries his weapon
before his father.
Peace is a country
that learns to weep
for its enemy’s dead.
They say
war writes history.
But I have seen—
it is peace
that writes
what is human.
In the end,
peace is not found—
it is chosen,
by those
brave enough
to stop shouting
Copyright © Sharda Gupta | Year Posted 2026
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