Gold, Mortality and Everything in Between || Poetry ✓

ZOMBIE

More times than not, I feel like a fraud.
I want to go on big adventures
But I don't want to leave the house.
And when I do step out of the door,
I wish to return back almost immediately.
The 80 sq. ft. room where I live is like a dead box where inspiration cannot reach
Yet I never wish to leave the bed,
For in dreams I feel more alive than when I'm awake,
And it's not a figure of speech.
In that box stuffed with oxygen,
I feel like I can shut the world out for good,
The world racing for gold and escaping from coal
Or racing for coal and escaping the gold,
The world which is more sulphur dioxide than dihydrogen monoxide.

I have a tiny flower plant to call my own.
It was a gift to me and I've kept it near the sink
Next to the door leading out to the balcony
So that it gets a hint of sunlight but not direct sunlight.
I water is twice everyday -
Watered it thrice on the day I got it -
But I'm not sure if it's alive anymore.
If its leaves are green, it has to be, right?
I come from a place where it's more green than grey
But there's something very similar about the two colours
About how easily one bleeds into the other,
But I'm afraid I haven't learned to tell the difference yet.

The place where I live has a balcony 12 ft long and 2 ft wide.
From there I can see 22 buildings -
25 if I count the ones hidden behind other buildings and the only thing visible are the water tanks glistening at the top.
Anyway,
25 houses containing scores many people,
People just like me,
Or maybe not like me,
Maybe more than me,
Maybe less of a fraud than me.
People on whom I want to write stories
But every time I think of doing it,
I realise I'm short on words.
Or maybe my language does not have enough words,
Maybe words from a dictionary cannot capture what it feels like to be alive;
To live,
To have so many emotions you can't tell one from the other,
To have so many stories inside of you
You feel the only way to get them out is to rip open your skin.

See, I'm a storyteller
But a phoney one at that.
I speak of feelings I feel I've never felt
I tell stories I feel I've never lived,
Hiding behind a pen and a microphone
Using the loud voice I've been gifted at birth
To announce to the world that I'm living,
To tell myself that I'm living,
Making myself the biggest fraud, in the process;
Because see, I write sagas about life being full of life,
All the while feeling lifeless inside.