a side effect by Nandini Rabindra Maharana (16, India)

​I am a side effect,
a terrible side effect
of my whole family.
The genes they have
are not the genes I have
and I terribly detest my history
because the history I got
is not the history I wanted.

---

A rebel from within
with thoughts vicious (they say)
and a terrible truth teller I am,
my thoughts are like the
rocks getting twisted in a hurricane
and the weight of the silence of
aftermath kills my innocent soul
slowly and steadily. It whispers
how are you into my ears like
a lullaby and throws me into the
arms of nightmares who coax me
to harm my folks.
I am a killer, my father shouts
in the alley. It's not new,
the blame-game, each generation
has its own new set of characters
but the repetitive despicable story.
My mother knows who jumped
on her dreams and gave it a
torturous death but she stays quiet
being loyal to her husband and family.
But I spoke and now I am a killer
who bathed in sunshine every afternoon
because the mundane walls of her room
suffocated her.

​On the subway nearby I see myself
walking with a small bag, running
away from home, a home which
could never be mine. The heavy weight of
catastrophic glances push my heart into
an ICU, it is cold and numb remembering
how I tried but could never fit in the
age old rules our witty ancestors made.
My father doesn't understand modernised
terms like freedom and feminism flashing
on the television or I assume he refuses to
and my mother is too busy to look at it.
She is happy or I assume tries to be happy
with her spices and utensils, a small world
now she refuses to get out of.

They don't understand how it feels
to romanticize the iron bars one is
trapped in, the bars made by their
hallucination. It's preposterous to
lose yourself according to someone's
rules, if I want to lose myself I will
do so by kissing each cloud
walking in the lane of the skies.
I feel they don't understand freedom
because everyone is not a rebel,
and not everybody is thirsty to
drink the vial of craziness and independence.

I am a side effect dipped in duality
of the night which makes me both
nostalgic and angry at the same time.
I am a side effect of my proud ancestors,
I am a side effect no poet
would want to write about because
it is hard to tame a muse who
is in love, love with her dreams that are
catastrophic for others.