When Misery Feels Like Justice

By Pratishtha Kumari

I watch their suffering,

and somewhere inside,

a strange calm blooms.

They once turned their backs

on my own people’s cries,

let wounds bleed,

let hearts fracture in silence.

Now, when pain circles back to them,

when death brushes their doors,

I do not mourn—

instead, I feel a quiet satisfaction,

a justice the world delivers

without my hands moving.

Is it cruelty,

or a scar speaking for me?

Is it schadenfreude—

this shadowed joy

born from another’s fall?

I do not know its name,

only that my heart feels lighter

when theirs grows heavy.

By Pratishtha Kumari