Who Am I?

By Sneha Manna

Who am I?

A rotting thing in the mirror,

a corpse stitched with lies and old prayers,

a snarling carcass crawling in my own skin.

I stare into those black, empty eyes —

two gaping wounds leaking silent screams.

I watch myself decay,

peeling, breaking, rotting,

becoming the thing even nightmares refuse to dream.

Once, I was their darling.

A gold-plated doll on a shrine,

their perfect toy with glassy smiles and clean hands.

They called me their pride, their blood jewel, 

but jewels shatter when crushed in a fist.

Now, I am the fly-splattered memory of their hope,

a dead star rotting cold in a pit no one looks into.

My heart still beats, 

but it feels like knives scraping bone.

Each breath is a choking gasp through my broken ribs,

each thought is a maggot squirming in the cracks of my skull.

I claw at the inside of my own mind,

trying to find the girl I was,

but she's just bones now, 

picked clean by vultures called Expectations.

The mirror lies.

It shows me a demon wearing my hair,

a stitched-up parody of the perfect child.

I was tied to their cross of demands,

whipped with their dreams,

hung out to rot when I cracked and bled.

Now I am a puppet made of scarred meat and broken glass.

I dance when they pull the strings — but every step, a scream.

Did I kill myself?

Or was it them — smiling, clapping,

as they gutted me alive with their sweet, poisoned words?

They fed me their dreams until I vomited out my own soul,

until I lost myself,

worse still, I became what they feared —

a disappointment,

a failure that they can now spit on and forget.

I try to claw my way back.

I try to stitch myself up with broken fingers,

trying to sew the pieces into something they'll love.

But I bleed more and more, not red, 

I bleed white,

a thick, cold ooze,

bleeding and sewing and tearing again,

desperately trying to rebuild a corpse into a princess.

But even if I find her—

Will she still be alive?

Or just another beast dressed in silk,

another corpse dolled up for their sick applause?

I try,

I bleed,

I rot. 

And the harder I try,

the deeper the grave I dig for myself.

The girl is gone now.

All that's left is a feast for crows.

By Sneha Manna