lost and never found

I write poems to stay sane :)

[almaaspoetry]

Why lost and never found!

I started this page nearly 10 years ago when I was a teenager struggling with loneliness and depression.

That was the point where I felt so lost that I started believing I’d never find the happy cheerful version of myself again.

But 10 years of effort paid off well.

I’ve found myself again.

Still messy, but almost there.

[almaaspoetry]

The angry, selfish daughter.

They called me the angry, selfish daughter, as though names could explain the weather inside a house.

No one asked what became of the daughter before she became the angry, selfish one.

So I packed. Not clothes. Versions.

One that smiled before the room decided whether it would smile back.

One that wore achievements like boarding passes, believing "We're proud of you" was a country you could reach if you travelled far enough.

One that learned gratitude by counting every kindness twice and every wound only once.

One that came home each time with a fuller suitcase and emptier hands. Until there was nothing left to fold.

Not because the suitcase had grown too heavy, because I had grown too light.

Home had no arrival gate.

Only a waiting room where every embrace carried an invisible "as long as".

As long as you listen. As long as you become someone we want you to be. As long as...

Perhaps that's why my suitcase always stood half-packed beneath the bed.

Not waiting for a journey. Waiting for permission.

No one asked what became of the daughter before she became the angry, selfish one.

One day, I realised the road had been living inside me long before I ever stepped onto it.

If I leave, they may say the angry, selfish daughter chose a life somewhere else.

I wonder if anyone will notice I'd been travelling for years, crossing the quiet distance between who I was and who I kept trying to become.

Maybe I was never searching for another city. Maybe I was only searching for a place where unpacking didn't mean leaving pieces of myself behind.

A place where love didn't have to be earned before it could feel like home.

[almaaspoetry]

I wandered into a city ;

where chimneys confessed what mouths had mastered burying,

where the alleys remembered the weight of unopened throats,

where windows had forgotten the etiquette of mirrors and translated every heartbeat into weather.

The sky carried what the earth could not persuade to remain beneath the skin.

By evening, the horizon had become a cathedral of unnamed colours,

not painted, but escaped.

The guide called it beautiful.

I wondered, how many sunsets were simply people running out of places to hide.

No one looked away. No one reached, either.

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I’m carrying a hurricane,

while everyone checks the weather and shrugs.

My mind is an abandoned house,

every room flooded with unfinished tomorrows.

Mud sleeps between the floorboards,

holding the footprints of days I couldn’t survive properly.

My eyes are windows left facing the storm,

so accustomed to grey they no longer expect sunrise.

They call me sunshine,

never noticing I am a ruin politely pretending to be home.

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The walls still flinch at thunder

long after the sky has fallen silent.

But now I build with stronger bricks,

and storms won’t take my home again.

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They gave me leftover crumbs,

and I thanked them for a feast.

I gathered scraps with trembling hands,

hoping to stitch them into something called love.

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is the distance between steel and my blue veins the only hollow anchor left for a ghost that has forgotten how to scream?

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“So, who would you call?”

I’d call the version of me

who wasn’t afraid to love loudly.

Because if the world was ending,

I wouldn’t want apologies left unsaid.

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Poems are great. Are you from India?

Thank you, I’m glad you like them.

Yes, I’m from India.

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No knocking on doors that never stayed wide.

No bending my voice to soften their pride.

No asking for crumbs of love misread.

No shrinking myself to fit what they said.

No proving my worth, no ache in my chest.

It comes without pleading,

it stays without test.

And now I stand certain.

chosen, not chased.

Loved without asking.

Held without haste.

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The night threads itself through my ribs,

a black bird trembling in the hush of my lungs.

Unheld, I am already learning the language of drowning.

Somewhere,

a shore carries the shelter my body remembers.

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The Room That Won’t Rest

My mind is a room that refuses to go dark.

The light buzzes like tired wiring that will not switch off.

The air feels rationed, as if the windows were sealed shut.

The walls seem closer than they were yesterday.

Stress moves like a slow leak in the ceiling.

It is not loud, but it is constant.

It gathers quietly in the corners of my chest.

Small things swell inside me like wood left in water.

They press against my ribs until there is no space left.

My body reacts before my thoughts can reason.

My heart sounds like an alarm in an empty building.

My breath feels borrowed and incomplete.

I brace as if something is burning.

But nothing is on fire.

It is only my mind overheating in silence.

Exhaustion hangs on me like wet cloth stitched to bone.

It clings as if it has memorized my shape.

It refuses to dry.

My lungs feel lined with powdered glass.

It is too fine to see, but sharp enough to cut.

Every inhale feels slightly fractured.

I move carefully inside myself.

I step around my own thoughts like cracked tiles.

I fear one wrong idea will split me open.

The room inside my chest feels larger now.

It also feels colder.

My chest is an empty house after someone left suddenly.

The furniture remains, but the warmth has gone.

The air stands still.

My head hums like faulty wiring behind thin walls.

The sound never fully stops.

It only lowers its volume.

I break quietly.

The cracks are thin but spreading.

Nothing dramatic falls.

It is a slow collapse.

Beam by beam.

Sleep feels like a master switch.

I do not want dreams.

I want the current cut.

I want silence that does not vibrate.

I want stillness that does not prepare for impact.

I want to be a body at rest,

not a shoreline waiting for waves

that never stop rising.

[almaaspoetry]

They say, go where you’re valued.

But where is that,

when my veins have already spilled their last red prayer?

Where is that,

when my mind withers like cloth torn at the edges,

yet my heart still drums against the silence?

Where is that,

when my body is stone,

and my eyes are rivers that only flow toward the ceiling’s blank sky?

Where is that,

when my chest thirsts for comfort

like a dying man reaching for water?

Where do I go?

Nowhere, maybe this is where I stay.

[almaaspoetry]

“I was once loved,” said the dried flower.

“They placed me in vases, whispered how pretty I was.”

“Then they forgot me the moment I stopped blooming.”

The flower let out a sigh in despair.

“I was never loved,” said the weed.

“They pulled me out before I could even grow.”

“Too wild, too unwanted, too much.”

“Funny,” the flower whispered, “we both ended up here.”

“Discarded when we no longer served them.”

“We were either too much or not enough.”

“But when we were alive, we mattered, even if they didn’t see it.”

[almaaspoetry]

I don’t write.

I bleed.

When I’m breaking,

I pour onto a paper.

With a heavy heart,

and quiet pain.

Words instead of tears.

Ink instead of sobs.

I write.

Or maybe I bleed.

[almaaspoetry]

they say

i’m too soft

too kind

but rain

never stops falling

just because it hurts

they pluck my petals

call it love

then walk away

leave me in pieces

still

i bloom through concrete

with roots that remember

what it means to stay gentle

[almaaspoetry]

I read a line once - “You will never be too much for someone who can’t get enough of you.”

And it’s been echoing ever since.

Like a soft knock at the back of my mind.

Maybe that’s what it was.

Maybe they just didn’t want me enough

Not the way I wanted them.

Not in the way that sees all your chaos and still stays.

Not in the way that holds space for your silence, your spirals, your sudden bursts of everything.

They say love is patient. But maybe theirs just ran out.

And all I got was a half-finished version of something that was never meant to be whole.

Maybe I was a wildfire, and they only ever came looking for candlelight.

So if I was ever too much, maybe it was just for someone who was never hungry enough to taste all of me.