जन्म दिलास तूच मला,
आणि तूच मला वाढविलं,
सोनेरी दागिन्यासारखं एकदम
तूच मला घडविलं.

कधी चुकलो तर ओरडलीस मला,
कधी प्रेमाने जवळ घेतलंस,
कधी लागेल असं बोललीस मला,
कधी काळजीने पांघरूण घातलंस.

झेलल्यास माझ्या अडचणी
स्वतःवर तू सर्व,
आईसारखं नातं बनवणारा
थोडाच आहे तो निसर्ग.

कितीही काहीही झालं तरी
नाही देणार मी तुला अंतर,
आयुष्याच्या शेवटपर्यंत तुझ्यावर
प्रेम करीन मी निरंतर.

You told everyone you were a care bear
But you don’t know how to handle my heart

You don’t know what it means to care
Because otherwise my heart wouldn’t be ripped apart

You told everyone you would fight for me
and would go through fire like a bold beast

You only fight for money and power, can’t you see?
You toss me around like prey, celebrate it like a feast

oh you, you beautiful bear, you stuffed with jealousy bear
you use your claws on me, you show me you are the silverback

And you hurt me so deeply, I don’t think that is care
which is odd, because bears don’t like leaders of a pack

I tried to stuff myself back together with needles and thread
but my eyes are leaking and my mouth stays taped

you want me to sit still and look like every other zombie-head
Mary wrote a book about me, in which I was monster-shaped

I wish you held me, consoled me, supported me and not like a ripped bear
because that is what it actually means to care

My mother talks about you
a lot
almost worships you like
a god
Heard her talk about you
on calls
Always screams in my face
telling me to be a lot
like you
But listening to her
talk
I don't think I really like
you.

Gently indifferent, resolved, hardened in stasis
As rain on unallowing concrete
In earthbound unflow downward:
Gravity’s darkbow so torpid

Roaring past chronology:
the machinery of 10 minutes later, blurring
echo and desire, calling
time bygone time.
Lying.
Murmuring and rustling, grasped in closure, the absence of leaves
Subtly and steadily
The absence of mother.

In obeisance I cede to these greater forces and stoically belt myself
Insufficient enough and ready in faith
That ever comforting rope

An irrevocable condition, tethered
beyond windows cruel and secure,
communion estranged,
in a handful of sand,
scattered to some outside home
tenderly viewed

Yellow the visage glares oblique
A hazy, flat omen
Blinking, too, as it drives onward
Sentimentally no longer:
The sterile plane of a new day

Gentle, gentle waking world
Icarus me in sky not sea

I love mama, here,

in this old photo before --


she became mama.

Her dreams didn’t die all at once.
They faded like a body losing warmth
quietly, while the water boiled
and someone called her name
from the other room.

She tells you to chase yours
because she didn’t.
Because she stayed
with a man, with a family,
with the version of herself
that always came second.

She was just like you.
Sharp in the mind,
soft in the places
no one thought to protect.
She gave too much
because no one taught her
she was allowed to keep anything.

That’s why she says,
“Never compromise.”
Not because she’s brave,
but because she remembers
how it felt to hand over pieces of herself
and be thanked for it.

You remind her
of the girl she buried
under laundry and prayer.
You speak too loudly sometimes,
and she doesn’t stop you.
You leave rooms without apologizing,
and she watches
half grief, half awe.

You are
her unfinished sentence.
The better ending
she never wrote.

And still,
she’s praying
not for herself anymore,
but that this world
won’t ask you to shrink
just to fit inside it.

Don’t give up.
Because if you do,
then all she gave up
will have been for nothing