Self Portrait

There's a drunken pathway

that runs between her brows.

It runs almost consistently

right from dusks to dawns.

It's particularly hard to tread,

lest you know her very well!

It's full of thorns and blooms

from all around the gardens of dwell.

But she embarks on

over and over again.

She worries that the thorns

haven't pricked enough of her shell.

She frets that she wouldn't break out

in ways that would earn applause;

she ponders day in and day out

what they might make of a pause.

It's less complicated than it sounds,

for with the sun shining in her eyes

she knows her way around.

It's actually the deep-water dives

in the centre of her forehead,

that seem impossible to manoeuvre.

Once in, she struggles to come out,

never finding enough breath in her to carry over.

She keeps counting her breaths:

One, Two, Three...

until the day she finally implodes,

calm and content with glee.

The throbbing eyelids

are finally at peace.

Now completely shut,

they aren't searching piece by piece

for hidden meanings embedded in the streets

around the mouths of others.

She had wondered if any of them

would ever really match hers.

Now the audience is baffled,

wondering what's this pause about.

They wait for someone to announce,

"It's a technical glitch, over and out!"

But there's no sound,

not even a pin drops.

Soon, they begin to filter out,

they'd barely waited a few minutes, tops!

And now, the hall is empty

with no one to keep watch.

She rises back up to the surface,

she'd made herself a notch.

She sighs in relief

as she swims out from the pool of her eyes.

It had been a long journey,

but one very much worth the tries.

And if you look at her now,

there's a buttery road constructed between her brows.

She radiantly glides through it

day in and day out.

~Khyati