I Was 16

I was 16 when my puberty was a newspaper headline,
the coffee rings of my shame circled it
like one of the moons of Jupiter
whose name we never learned.
I was 17 when my body bred curves
and I learnt to use self hate as ammunition.
I was 18 when I learnt to translate my “I’m not okay”
to “I’m fine” because my parents and I
don’t speak the same language of sorrow.
I was 19 when I bent my heart for a guy
like a bird’s wing against the sun.
He will make it into my obituary for love
but not my love letters anymore.
I was 20 when the ozone layer-ish lap of my mother
stopped taking my worries away and my hope
grew itself an expiry date.
How long does hope stay consumable after it expires?
I was 21 when my milk- tooth- like idea
of a career balancing my world on its heels fell away,
( now my career is a station welcoming the wrong trains.)
I was 22 when the hugs I wove became rubber bands
breaking faster than they could hold on.
I was 23 and my friends were all fighting their own wars,
I’m an answering machine playing on repeat
of the voids my bonds had gone through,
(I had arrows to my heart but I wasn’t the only one.)
I was 24 when I found love again, but now
love came in a religion parallel to mine;
his quran and my gita weren’t at nuclear wars.
I was 25, tight skirts, tummy tuckers,
diet schedules and missed flights:
these are the milestones I ticked against.
I was 26 when my rebellion took a break,
my new tattoo was a nicotine patch
and a habit that smelled like vodka.
I haven’t explained my childhood self
the differences between
nostalgia for the freedom I had and
the nostalgia for the peace I could’ve had.
I’m closer to 30 now, weighed by stale condoms
and overused excuses in my purse.
I’m not closer to knowing the world
like the palm of my hand,
but I’ve stopped memorizing it
like an anthem that I naturally picked up.
I’m stumbling with my words
and so are others, I’m picking emotions
to keep and sell and so are others.
Adulthood is a flea market of borrowed
and never-can-be-returned emotions.
It is like a powercut that you nickname “the night sky.”
You either live through it or live with it.
Or write poems about it.

– Niveditha Kalyanaraman

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Niveditha is a 22-year-old journalism student fueled by a love for writing. She discovered her passion in ninth grade while contributing to her school magazine. Inspired by the reaction to her first poem on womanhood, she embraced the identity of a poet. Since then, Niveditha has penned two anthologies, with a third on the horizon. Her dream is to become a published author, giving her poems the recognition she has always envisioned.

Art: John William Waterhouse, ‘Ophelia’, 1889