#NaPoWriMo Day 1: Would The Remnants Be Enough?

First things first!

I am incredibly sorry about the year-long gap I have taken from blogging. It has been a stressful time, with a lot of real-life stuff (adulting) going on. Nevertheless, I am back right on time for NaPoWriMo 2024, which happens to be my favourite time of the year! I am super rusty because all the writing I have managed to do over the last year has been for work purposes, but I am hoping to get back to poetry and blogging more regularly very soon.

That being said, the first prompt for this year via napowrimo.net is to recollect the plot (or a part of the plot) of a book we haven’t read in a long time. The book I chose is titled ‘Airhead’, written by Meg Cabot. I remember reading it back when I was sixteen, and the story remains one of my favourites to this day.

For more context, the book is about a teenage girl who dies in an accident and wakes up in the body of a supermodel. The girl is declared dead to everyone but her immediate family and is bound to a contract stating that she will take over the supermodel’s life and do as she’s expected. Of course, the trilogy itself follows a much sinister plot that can’t be explained or watered down in a hundred words or less, but without further ado, here’s my poem about the same!

Happy reading! Xx

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I don’t know who I am anymore,
Everything I am is borrowed.

I walk in her shoes,
I take her place.
Deep within, still,
I’m the same as I once used to be.
I wear another’s face as a mask,
My name is all but dead–

For that is what I am.

For all intents and purposes,
Dead.

To everyone who has ever known me,
And the one I dearly loved,
If you walked past me today,
Would the remnants of me still be enough?
If my mask fell away,
Would pieces of me still stay?

And if you looked into my eyes,
Could you see past the disguise?
I no longer live my own life–
A mere fragment,
Shiny and untouchable,
An identity built upon lies.

Yet, I miss the love in your eyes,
I crave the warmth of your gaze,
I wish you’d recognize
The familiarity in a stranger’s face,

In the pieces of you I still carry
With a heavy heart full of love,
All of me is forever gone,
But would the remnants be enough?

~© Shubhangi Srinivasan.

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Featured image by Fidel Fernando on Unsplash