Isn’t it ironic?
How he, and she, and they, and them —
and every pronoun in between,
above, beneath, and beyond —
proclaim from the hollowest chambers of their lungs
that they do not care.
About judgment.
About whispers.
About the world’s ever-turning gaze.
And yet,
they barter in currencies
etched off that very gaze.
Their worth weighed
in nods and frowns,
in silent approvals,
in measured applauses.
They preach detachment
from stages carved from craving —
their “I don’t give a damn”
engraved in ink blots on worn out pages
they still hope
someone reads.
Every rebellion
hand-stitched
to fit the fashions of the hour.
Every truth
practiced before a mirror
just to sound spontaneous.
We’ve made a theatre
of not caring.
We costume our indifference
and choreograph our silence,
each pause rehearsed
to sound profound.
Even heartbreak now
asks for timing.
Even solitude
demands an audience.
We cry only in places
that echo.
And still we say —
with tired tongues and bold bravado —
that we are untouched,
unbothered,
untamed.
While inside,
we tally our worth
by how many turned their heads.
Somewhere along the way,
we learned to wear our scars
like medals,
to shape our pain
into parables,
to name every wound
so it never goes unnoticed.
And I?
I too have knelt
at the altar of performance —
sold sorrow in stanzas,
packaged ache in metaphors,
hoping it would buy me
a place in someone’s memory.
But now,
I long for an honesty
too quiet to quote,
too deep to define.
A grief that doesn’t announce itself.
A love that doesn’t audition.
Because maybe,
just maybe,
the final revolution
is to feel
without translation,
to live
without proof,
and to leave
without applause.
And, now that I stand before you
Cutting through your hypocrisies
like a scalding knife,
cutting through refrigerated rock-solid butter
Even if your fingers twitch for a second
to come together as hands,
and clap the fuck out of my surgical incision
of your darling hypocrisy of a rebellion
Don't you dare fucking applaud.
For even if this piece was a goddamn masterpiece
Your applauses wouldn't be spontaneous,
but an elaborately staged three-act play
Your praises would be the choice of currency
I was looking to dirty
my capitalist cunt of an existence with.
Your applauses would validate the rebel me
while vilifying my rebellion
of how your applauses mean nothing to me.
Because as much as you hoped
me being any different
would be your sole respite,
on an indecent, unworthy afternoon
I am but you,
each and every one of you,
a speckle of dust
identical to every other.
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