Home Body

by Rupi Kaur

is it possible to be born with such a melancholy spirit

my mind keeps running off to dark corners and coming back with reasons for why i am not enough

i’ll be quiet when we can say sexual assault and they stop screaming liar

depression is silent you never hear it coming and suddenly it’s the loudest voice in your head

nothing lasts forever let that be the reason you stay even this sick twisted misery will not last - hope i have never known anything more quietly loud than anxiety

it feels like i’m watching my life happen through a fuzzy television screen. i feel far away from this world. almost foreign in this body. as if every happy memory has been wiped clean from the bowl of my mind. i close my eyes and i can’t remember what happy feels like. my chest collapses into my stomach knowing that i have to get up in the morning and pretend i’m not fading away all over again. i want to reach out and touch things. i want to feel them touch me back. i want to live. i want the vitality of my life back.

i want to live i’m just afraid i won’t measure up to the idea people have of me in their heads

i’m either romanticizing the past or i’m busy worrying about the future it’s no wonder i don’t feel alive i’m not living in the only moment that’s real - present

how can i be so cruel to myself when i’m doing the best i can - be gentle

nothing can replace how the women in my life make me feel

i can live without romantic love but i can’t survive without the women i call friends they know exactly what i need before i even know i need it the way we hold space for each other is just different

i fear that my best years are behind me and nothing beyond this point will add up

the land sprawled its limbs and said put your feet up the trees said we will give you life the air said breathe me in the earth said take care of what takes care of you and we turned our backs on all of them

ours must be a politic of revolution freedom can’t exist until the most disadvantaged are free

no one on this planet is in more denial than the white man who regardless of all the evidence in front of him still thinks racism and sexism and all the world’s pain don’t exist