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anjana-raoPoems
They strung me up. Not by the neck, that would be too quick. No. They intended a slow torture for me, bound one foot, bound my arms. I heard a voice: *Escape is possible if you want it.* And I was alone. At first I struggled. Swayed back and forth from the wind, and the weather and the pain, to no avail. But eventually, I learnt to just Stop. If this was my life, So be it. I was not going to provide a show of my misery to any God. I saved my energy, learnt to live with seeing the world pass me by, learnt to see things from a different perspective. Torture? This was nice, relaxing even, I could hardly feel the pain, could block it out almost entirely. Perhaps this is what I wanted all along - an eternal break. Fool that I was, I failed to realize the torture was not physical but mental. Slowly I grew bored in contemplation, in limbo, in apathy, in atrophy. I remembered the voice: escape is possible, I remembered everything I wanted to do everything I still yearned to do. All the beauty and the goodness and the possibilities of Life made me ache, and I could not block it out. Suddenly I saw: this was not torture but a test. My time of suspension is up, These are but ropes, not chains. I know the way out, and I am not afraid. There is work to be done.
0
Dec 31, 2015
Dec 31, 2015 at 2:05 PM UTC
The Hanged Man
They strung me up. Not by the neck, that would be too quick. No. They intended a slow torture for me, bound one foot, bound my arms. I heard a voice: *Escape is possible if you want it.* And I was alone. At first I struggled. Swayed back and forth from the wind, and the weather and the pain, to no avail. But eventually, I learnt to just Stop. If this was my life, So be it. I was not going to provide a show of my misery to any God. I saved my energy, learnt to live with seeing the world pass me by, learnt to see things from a different perspective. Torture? This was nice, relaxing even, I could hardly feel the pain, could block it out almost entirely. Perhaps this is what I wanted all along - an eternal break. Fool that I was, I failed to realize the torture was not physical but mental. Slowly I grew bored in contemplation, in limbo, in apathy, in atrophy. I remembered the voice: escape is possible, I remembered everything I wanted to do everything I still yearned to do. All the beauty and the goodness and the possibilities of Life made me ache, and I could not block it out. Suddenly I saw: this was not torture but a test. My time of suspension is up, These are but ropes, not chains. I know the way out, and I am not afraid. There is work to be done.
Inspired by the Hanged Man card in the Tarot of Ages Deck, some of the words I used to write this are in the tags
#poetry#change#contemplation#apathy#rebirth#tarot#dullness#atrophy
Written by
anjana-rao
Dec 31, 2015
Dec 31, 2015 at 2:05 PM UTC
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