Not Every House Is a Home

By Shireen Rashid

Not every house is a home. The walls of stone, bricks of soil cannot define the asphyxiation I feel when confined within them. Not every house is a home. The people living inside it cannot understand how voiceless I feel around them. Even a bird in a golden cage is considered lucky. It’s living inside gold after all. But only its heart knows the feeling of confinement and loneliness staying in there forever. Not every emotion is expressed through words. Some through eyes, some through actions, some through that face which used to have a smile plastered on it once upon a time. If the world could comprehend a poet’s words, maybe those words were never meant to haunt in the first place. Emotions suppressed, feelings hidden, words unsaid stayed that way. No one noticed or questioned. After all everything there was fake. The compliments, the smiles, the actions. The only real thing was the sound of silence in the middle of the night, when someone used to shed silent tears, when someone prayed in the dark, when someone wished to escape in the world of dreams. 

By Shireen Rashid