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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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Details |
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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Details |
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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Details |
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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