Multi-Souled Puppet

Today I cannot be a good girl
Because today is not mine.

It is the cricket’s day that sits with seeming discomfort
At a high point in my room where two of the walls are meeting.
He has his grip.

Not unlike yesterday, when it was the day of the man I saw
On the street, asleep, having found shade under a tree.
It is forty degrees but he is dreaming.

Or like the day before that, was of a teenager of an alien life form
That I believe to exist on a planet in a similar fashion as ours.
She found out she is in love. It was her day.

Today, again, is most definitely not mine
And my mind cannot shake off this thought
With even the most arduous of efforts.

Today I forgot the date again. It is April 22nd.
I even forgot what pain used to feel like
For the most short-lived moment ever
And I am keener to find that out than I am about knowing the date.

Today I am gazing at the stripes again, my stripes.
Faint, familiar, unevenly placed about my skin.
Few lines by a stranger I read on an insignificant day
Mentioned that they make me a warrior and that I should be proud.
I cannot deny that they stand out. They are shiny.

Today I feel like going out in the battlefield once again.

I am frantic for my weaponry.
My fingers are trembling of fear and a rush
To feel the cool edgy steel again, to read the word ‘stainless’
Ironically etched on it.

I crave for the thrill of the victory.
I wouldn’t be lying if I called it defeat too.

I yearn for the fall because right before I hit the ground,
Gravity-influenced, devoid of senses,
I sincerely believe I have all the answers
-even if just for a shapeless unsure moment.

Today I tried to walk it off,
I couldn’t find the floor.

Tried to weigh cut-outs of my thoughts against the bundles of advices.
The balance dropped heavily to one side
As there was only a pair of broken scissors
In place of all the cut-out thoughts in one pane
And a heap of overflowing, instructing voices on the other.

I tried to deny the urge to peek under the already creased bedsheet
That is spread over a tangle of weakly threaded living mess.
But the liquid life in me is too suffocated; stifled -
Today it wants to escape.

Today it wants to paint over the shiny stripes, crumpled sheets
And an unreasonable mind.

It believes it looks beautiful as it runs over and drips.
It likes the idea of the contrasting bright red against a pale wheatishness
And warm red against the cold, clean porcelain.

Today I wish to surrender myself and become a story.
I want to witness a crime scene again
For the hundred and eleventh time this year,
Today.