A Story That Wasn’t Mine.

I finally had some time to get some actual writing done today and I came up with this poem about how we always look for familiarity in places that we don’t belong. We look for someone we connect with- a face that could, in a way or two, mirror our own. But mostly, it is just us trying to find solid ground when we can’t find anything to hold on to.

This is a poem about finding ourselves in the smallest fractions of the world. And sometimes, we do end up writing our own stories in the process.

Happy reading! Xx

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Written in these pages,
I read
A story that wasn’t mine,
Lost in a crowd of faces,
I look
For a face I’ll never find,

Drunk on endless hope,
Stumbling in the dark,
Bruised and a little broken
From one too many falls;
I fell headfirst,
Hit the ground so fast,
Fell right into the dirt
Dug from the graves of past—

And I look for my face
In strangers I meet,
I hear whispers
Of all the secrets I keep,
I wonder how much they know
Of the real me;

Perhaps they never will,
And I’ll forever be
A stranger,
One they’ve crossed paths with,

I have no home,
All I am is a memory.

In these very pages,
I could write
A story all mine to tell,
In unknown faces
I’ll find
One I know all too well;

Drunk on endless misery
For stories that remain unknown,
If only I could read
All the stories that are gone,
All but erased from memories
Of those who’d rather forget;
Time is as cruel as can be,
Our todays filled with regrets—

I still look for my face
In stories I read,
Leave a little of me
With the people I meet,
I wonder what they think
Of the real me;

Perhaps it’s too much to ask,
I’ll only ever be
A stranger
With one too many stories,

But none of them mine,
They were never mine to keep.

~© Shubhangi Srinivasan.

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Featured Image by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash