Poetry: Priya Priyadarshni

Priya Priyadarshni

A poem of random thoughts 1

Sylvia Plath was sick and depressed but I think she wouldn't have killed herself if she hadn't fallen in love.

More often than not I find myself in the lives and writings of Dickinson, Plath, Woolf, and Beauvoir but I've come to a violent realization that I'm none of them. I'm not even my mother.

I'm someone I don't recognize.

Love has the color of blood. Until I fell in love with you I never wore red lipstick.

There's a man who has been all over me and this man is even there on the insides, I'm afraid he has painted me in his own color.

Love I believe is violence. You are killing me and I crave fresh wounds every day.

I didn't believe in magic until you touched me. Now all I ever look for is a way to break this spell.

We come straight out of a British novel, you make love to me and call it lust. I believe you.

You are reading the poems you have written for all the women you love. I'm listening to it while laying naked on you.

My mother wants to know if I'm in love. How do I tell her that there's a box of darkness inside me that I keep hidden from everyone else? But from time to time it keeps coming out on the surface. And I'm scared of it. I'm scared of myself. Because of this darkness, I know I can't be loved. I think someone has found the box.

My desire to listen to your morning voice just after you woke up, my desire to be near you as soon as I wake up, and my mind always playing with me so I can see you in my dreams almost every day is insanity.

I've medicine for almost everything and yet nothing seems to get better.

At the arrival of a new pain I find myself at the altar of God again... praying for death. And as always god doesn't listen. He says it's not enough. You shall suffer more.

I want to be the person everyone thinks I am.

You see you cannot tell him, why your heart aches all the time. You cannot express all the love you have for him. And you cannot be what he wants.

Loving you is so easy. I do it without even thinking. It is just my feelings are way too strong which makes it difficult for me to breathe.

I wish there was a way to explain, Ifs and buts, how and why, should haves and why nots, but there's no answer to all these questions. All I know is it happened because it was meant to be and I won't have it any other way. I'm so glad that this happened.

I remember the first time I was with you lying in bed while holding each other. I asked you why it feels like home.

As long as I was with you I didn't feel that I needed to be fixed. I didn't feel broken. I felt complete. And everything starts to make sense, But I'm afraid I'll never feel this way ever again.

I think I'm winning because I allowed myself to feel. For the first time in my life, I did something for myself without any guilt. I'm glad I did it no matter how painful it is. I'm just happy to know that I'm alive. I've everything I wanted from this life. I just wanted somebody to die for and now I have one.

I don't like myself these days. I don't like the way I behave. I'm being a nuisance to myself and to others. I'm tired of listening to my own sobs. I'm tired of the pain I feel in my chest because I'm grasping for air after I've made myself breathless from crying. My lungs start to burn. My throat is coarse. I'm unable to eat or sleep. My entire body hurts. But more than anything else there's this hole in my heart that just won't let me live peacefully even for a second.

And I've to do just two things in life. Live and love you. And to me, both of them mean the same thing. As long as I live I'll love you and as long as I love you I'll live. Because if I die then who's gonna love you like this.

All my life I knew

What I didn't want to be

I thought this was the only way

Of knowing what I wanted.

I hope there are people like me who can only fall asleep after sunrise just to know that they've survived the night.

I'm in a war against myself

Been trying to kill this feeling

But I'm afraid

This feeling has been

killing me slowly.

There hasn't passed a moment when I haven't thought of you. You've been plaguing my mind like nothing else in this world really matters now. Time has not been moving since I saw you the last time.

I shall keep writing you letters that I'll never send. There are things I wanna say to you but I'll just let you live.

No one has ever hurt me as much as you but then I never gave anyone as much right I gave to you.

I learned it at a very young age of 12. How to save myself. Because no one came to save me and since then I always believed no one else can.

When you love someone you can see through them.

My problem is that I don't let people love me. Why, I don't know? Do I think I'm unloveable? Do I think I don't deserve love? No, I think I should be kept on a pedestal and worshipped. I know I need too much love and it's not possible for any normal human to do it. It's not that I don't let anyone come close because I want to. It's just that the closeness I want is perhaps too close.

Those I choose to love. I love them with everything I have and I love it all. Light and dark both. Although light is easy to love, darkness attracts me more.

I think I'm a museum of broken things but at the same time, I think I'm magic because all the broken things are art pieces.

You said you were afraid to touch me, you thought I might shatter.

Even the silence of my room is familiar with the sound of your name.

Your thought comes to my mind even before I open my eyes.

If it's nothing then why does it hurt so bad.

We should learn to put a pause to our feelings.

A poem of random thoughts 2

I no longer know how to write a poem

Everything I write is just another failed 

attempt to write what I feel 

And words are never enough 

I don't have enough colors

To paint all the seasons 

That shift in my bones

Is there any other way 

To say I love you more than 

My desire to die

The war is over

I'm the winner and the loser

I won and I lost everything I had

I killed what I wanted to save 

Love might be our desire to die 

I like resting my head on your chest 

Both of us are burning 

But we were burning in different fires 

Most of the life is lost in

Longings of all kinds

I'm as lost as a Siberian bird 

In the summer 

I've a newfound love for 

The Himalayan mountains 

I feel alien on this planet 

I'm not terrestrial 

My lover and I are the same 

Both of us couldn't love me 

I'm the throbbing pain

At the end of my spine 

I cannot run away from myself 

There's nothing I can't find or do

With you. I want to have it all

It's so scary to love you like 

My life depends on it.

I need a moment of silence 

All the voices in my head 

are driving me crazy 

When I'll wake up tomorrow 

You won't be here

I believe that it was destiny 

That brought us together 

I had all this love that had no place to go 

And you were in dire need of it

I'm feeling thirsty while 

I'm drowning 

I choose to be a poet in sickness and in health 

We were so beautiful together 

That the stars got jealous 

If pain is all I'm fit for 

Then let it hurt

I hope that the storm outside will

calm the storm inside 

This storm is trying to find peace 

The beauty of finding yourself 

in disaster. I had my fist clenched 

So tightly around life because I knew

I was losing it. I hope art will save me

And even if it can't I hope 

I'm dying poetically. 

Wasn't it enough suffering?

All the years I lived without you.

Too hot, too cold, too far, too close, too happy, too sad, too much love, not enough, this list can go on and on. 

Listen burn this list. We are here, 

Put on this planet to feel that is why 

We are humans.

Live, love, and go crazy 

Perhaps the answer lies in the living 

Sleep has become a 

language I no longer understand 

In the suffering of the self

Lies our humanness

Do you know why you are so broken?

So I can pour my love into you 

I'm the snake I keep dreaming about 

When I was young I used to be afraid of the dark,

now the darkness is afraid of me.

Therapy cannot help me,

I need exorcism.

And apparently there's no 

Correct way to live

My mind is a terrible place I don't wanna be here

I loved you and you killed me, we are even now.

I lie dead for 10 days on the 11th day I wake up to love you again 

I'm never not thinking of you 

Like always I take the bleeding inward

Like always I let it kill me 

I die a little every day and still 

Try to live every day. This is what I do

I've always been adult with my pain.

Somedays I sit with it because it won't let go of my body

Somedays I abandon myself and go on living like it's not my pain

How can I be angry with anyone else 

When I abandon myself so easily so often 

like it's nothing. This body is nothing.

This body is my graveyard.

I bury myself in my ribcage.

I no longer desire anything.

He never made false promises 

He was always honest brutally. 

I took a road that led me to you and it ended there.

I'll stay on that road forever even if that means 

never reaching anywhere again. 

You are my home and I shall be there

As long as I live and after death.

A poem of random thoughts 3

My favorite movie is "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse."

Today I wrote a one-word poem,

It was your name.

You cannot lose something that was never yours. 

My sister says you cannot rot forever

I've been doing this all my life I'm sure I can do it for the rest of it. 

My family tells me that I'm hard to deal with and almost impossible to handle

I say wild things should either be killed or set free.

You carry your summer to your winter because burning is all you know. 

I've been passionate about everything that has ever caught my attention. 

Even death, it has never left my mind. 

Winter is knocking on my doorstep 

This deadening silence echoes in my bones 

I'm hoping everything will freeze 

Except my love for you 

Because in time 

We are constantly changing 

You are no longer you 

And I'm no longer me

I only take passionate lovers.

I never understood love

It was always a matter of being 

Whatever was needed of you 

And if he wanted light 

I would have put myself on fire.

Every fucking thought leads me to you.

How do you live without me?

Teach me to live without you.

They say hardships make you wiser. 

I don't want to be great,

I want to be happy.

The only peace I find these days is in knowing that everything comes to an end.

You, and with you everything you couldn't bear. 

I don't want to be me.

Why can't I be someone else?

The demon possessing my body says 

"I've come home to you"

I wanted to know what God wanted from me. 

Just agony beyond my mere existence. 

Or was I being punished?

What had I done to offend God?

I don't want to say the truth and I cannot lie.

So I remain silent.

Someday I'll be happy again.

No one can be sad all their lives 

Can they?

I knew it was too late 

And I cannot go back 

It was not possible to go back 

Someone, please save me

I'm lost and scared. 

What does it feel like to be in love?

It feels like someone is stabbing you in your chest multiple times and you are letting them do it.

1st thing on my to-do list every day is to survive 

I want a gentle life but it's not for me.

What should I do with my madness?

There is no place for me 

This ache of what could have been and what I lost will never subdue 

I feel all I've done in this life is waste my time 

Nothing makes sense anymore 

Nothing keeps me happy 

Why is this meaninglessness?

When I gave me to you 

It was not in exchange for anything 

Now you can't give me back to me 

It's yours 

I'm yours 

Now what you want to do with me and my love is up to you 

Keep it or throw it away

But I can't take it Back.

I won't let the winter creep in

After you left I forgot how to live 

We are one soul split into two 

We don't have to be together 

To be one

There's no you and I 

For me, you are not an idea

You live and breathe inside me

And you may be unaware of this 

But your soul has found a home.

A lover used to say if I'll ever know that I'm about to die. I'll run to you.

I lie to my parents all the time because no one wants a sick child 

I learnt about life in hospitals.

In those moments when 

I held you close to my chest 

You were mine and 

That will be forever mine

I keep telling myself that I can live without you 

And my body keeps refusing to breathe

You were not created for the tender things 

He was kind to me and 

I forgot that for a moment.

I know everything 

But that doesn't stop it from hurting

Just like you know it will break your heart 

But You can't help falling in love.

I keep having the same thought again and again 

I'm tired

I want to sleep 

Take me home. 

I, too, loved a man, who thought killing me was better than loving me.

No one can take your love away from you 

The world will call you crazy and hold their laughter 

You never cared for it before and you won't care for it now.

How can my heart break so many times 

It breaks every day. 

He thought saying it out loud would kill us 

That we loved 

So we decided to die silently 

We were everything and nothing at the same time.

I'm afraid my longings will outlive me.

I didn't want to die 

I wanted to live

But somehow I wasn't able to and 

That's why I wanted to die

I was okay being different and not belonging anywhere until I met you.

There's a voice in my head that keeps saying 

There's no cure for your madness 

All that aches belongs to me

I hope it dies soon with me 

Living for the aesthetics because why kill something so beautiful? After all, people should know that hell had a pretty face. 

You are me and I'm you 

Even if we're not together 

But we're never alone 

Now I finally know the answer 

Quantum entanglement 

That's what we are.

They say women like you are on the path of damnation. 

Women like me never repent. 

We just burn, and we carry our hell with us. 

You took my everything with you 

My very existence 

My right to be 

You denied me my own being 

By denying my love 

Don't let these modern 

theories discard you 

The artist and the art 

are not two different things 

My poems are me 

And I'm poetry.

Why do I feel like the loneliness I've in me existed even before I was here? 

Whoever is writing my story take a break or I swear to god I'm gonna burn that fucking book.

I always believed that being burnt alive was one of the worst ways to die. They burnt witches at the altar. And I was afraid that because of my madness, I'll set myself on fire. 

I'm put on this planet to love people and to endure pain.

Why would you keep loving someone who thought killing you was better than loving you? You can't break the spell

Because breaking is not an act of love.

Poetry is something you fail to write.

He knew exactly what would kill me and he did that. 

I grieve for my love 

Because it has no place to go

I sit with blood on my hands

As I murder it every day.

In a world full of there's plenty of fish in the sea be someone's lobster.

Was it easy?

No, it was the toughest battle I ever fought 

Was it familiar?

No, never have I ever felt something so strong 

But then I was used to finding myself in new disasters, of soul-crushing events and pain that rips you open never to heal. I was familiar with pain all my life. It has been a lifelong companion.

I hope someday you will get tired of killing me.

This world couldn't kill me

I died for love.

Everything is okay 

And all of a sudden 

Something stings

And it bites

Like a rodent 

On the dead meat

Your absence 

Eats me.

When I found out he enjoyed killing me 

Dying has become my favorite hobby 

You were always present even in your absence.

I don't know how and when you became my god

And just like god you loved watching me in pain.

Love is not worth the pain it causes 

Love anyway.

***

Bio: Priya Priyadarshni is a poet, translator, and a PhD research scholar in the Department of English at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. In these poems, she has experimented with the stream-of-consciousness technique.

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Setu, January 2025