Backwards I Walk

Backwards I walk
With a lump of sorrow
In the pit of my stomach
Not again, whisper my heart
Can’t take it no more
To be a stop gap arrangement
Because no one else is there
An amusement, an option
When I make you my priority

Backwards I walk
From the crowd you put me in
Where everyone offering
You pain and pleasure
Of varying degree is important

I am just another number
In the system you have devised
Where no hierarchy exists
For people, things and events
A sheep I am not
If you could love them all
Irrespective of who and what
They are, it’s not the love
I know or seek

Backwards I walk
From a place where I am
Entirely dispensable
Here today, gone tomorrow
Lost and forgotten
There are plenty of others
To pain and pleasure you
I am not really needed so
Why should I find bliss
Only in your arms
Or suffer every minute of your absence?

So backwards I walk until
Distance between us allows me
To remove you from the throne
And put you back in crowd

Backwards I walk, until I
Learn to look at the world around me
Without wanting to share it with you
Not weave verses around you in dreams
Or worry about your loneliness

Backwards I walk
Into my true self
Come to meet me there
Someday

 

About the Poet:
Nalini Priyadarshni is a poet, writer, editor and amateur photographer. Her work has appeared at various international magazines and lit journals including Up the Staircase Weekly, eFiction India, Mad Swirl, Crescent Magazine, The Riveter Review, Writes & Lovers Café, The Gambler, Camel Saloon, Earl of Plaid, CUIB-NEST-NIDO, and The Open Road Review, Phoenix Photo and Fiction, Undertow Tanka besides numerous anthologies including Resonance, I Am Woman, Awakening of She, Art of Being Human etc. She lives in Ludhiana, India with her husband and two feisty kids. Her first solo poetry collection Doppelgänger In My House is expected in 2016.

 

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