a year is gone
and with it I have changed
not just places and people
but me and everything that I was
I have moved not once but twice
I have left behind my thoughts
my paani puri, my peking rice
like a snake peeling off its skin
like a deadend to the street
I have been born twice
I cried that the year is gone
not out of sadness and its moans of compromise
but because the worst was over
the last years were cruel
To survive it feels like having made it in a duel
I was scared of existing
I wanted to crumble, to evaporate
become a puff of smoke
a pile of ashes, to decimate
I left a home
to find me someplace new
the people, the city, the house, the country
felt strange and stranger
unrecognisable, unmanageable
the anxiousness returned
the concrete felt like piles on stones
one above the other
there were no people
no one I wanted to meet, to mingle
the friends, the lovers
no more than faces among others
no place felt safe, no room felt warm
it was time to move on.
