Dictated by society and obligations, a steered life we lead; we are an adulterated people. We don’t know what is in our heart, we don’t want to peer inwards, we are fearful. Strip everything down. Can you see yourself raw? Can you face what you see? Bitter we are past the looking glass. Peel off the layers and you will find a quivering truth rejected too often, born and bred in denial. Can you accept what you have let go? Confrontation was never our forte. We escape, emotional Houdinis. Routine takes over. We work mechanically, if we do the same thing long enough, everything else will lose meaning. We bury, not burn. Ashes scatter to never come back but bones stay forever. Regret lingers on us. You'll catch faint sniffs of it even now when we’re alone. Prose, poetry, music and I am foolish enough to be Pandora. I am not deep. Loss is deep. People. Things. Our attachment to them. Cut the ropes and the bridge will fall. You will fall with it. Yes. But you will return scarred, disfigured. Will you ever be able to make peace with that? Because I still struggle. A hollowness which is detected only when knocked upon the seemingly solid exterior. The strongest are the emptiest. We are not who we are. We are a mixture of what we want to be, what we should be and what we shouldn’t be. Our love as materialistic as the dead things that surround us. Broken. It’s all broken. The moment we were born, we started dying. Fragments hold us together, glued together by memories and dreams, fueled by hope. Falling apart and being pieced together again and again and again till we are claimed by what created us and we shall be purely whole again. We are an adulterated people. We are sellotaped souls.