La Mélancolie

Why am I commanded to be a fortress of emotional and to be physically functional?

While the world concurrently demands my submission?

Which path must I walk? Which voice must I obey?

Which must I serve?

Why am I destined to serve? And to keep all of my voices shut?

​I am like the Mimosa pudica

Perceptive, fragile, and profoundly sensitive

Within the chambers of my head and heart

I store a thousand unspoken sentiments

Stacked in precarious towers because I have never let them spill

A single prick of a needle’s tip and boom!

Perhaps my mind and soul would erupt into a thousand fragments

​I am a vessel for a vast, aching melancholy

​To see the throngs of people huddled at public stops

Pressed against one another in formal attire

Destined for a wage that barely secures the bread for tomorrow

Melancholy

​To see a soul on a park bench buried in a book

Ears shielded by a heavy whisper keeper

As if to barricade the world’s hollow chatter

Melancholy

​To see the buried dreams of wives across the earth

Desires purposefully interred just to sustain a home

And nourish the ego of a husband

Melancholy

​And to see myself, possessed by a galaxy of wants

Yet unable to reach them

Because my life seems scripted to remain ordinary

Melancholy

​To all the sorrows blooming in my mind

I hope they all heal swiftly

For it is no easy thing for a small soul like me

To harbor all that melancholy

A small soul who possesses no strength

Who holds no power to be the cure for such sadness

​But for how much longer must I endure this?