“Keep an eye out for the nail-biter,” they whisper, lurking in corridors with sneering eyes.
Nail-biter wakes up in her topsy-turvy bedroom with unruly hair and foul breath;
Weary-eyed, she stares listlessly at her text messages left unsent and mulls over thoughts of her death.
Nail-biter sits on her desk gaping out the window, dreaming of autumn renewal and blossoming spring;
Her hand trembles when she writes, her eyes tear-up when she visualizes; she’s only soldiering on, clinging to a limp string.
Nail-biter escapes the world momentarily in the smell of gardenias and chrysanthemums from the park she visits occasionally;
Until her only solace too was withdrawn boorishly and her days droned on in daydreams unearthly.
Nail-biter forgets her birthday until her phone chimes with a reminder, “It’s cupcake day!”
She sits on the terrace, legs swinging in the cool night air; a birthday party with the moon and a cupcake, “Here’s to another year to rot and decay!”
Nail-biter laughs and chats away, acts normally around people she’s afraid to lose if she isolates herself again;
But, goes unnoticed and weeps alone in bed all night, empty-hearted with the burden of the heavy little joys of life and, the ghost of her, eventually, only remains.
Nail-biter smiles and applauds cheerily listening to speeches on podiums when her efforts mingle with trash;
She knows too well she is degrading but numbs the pain every single time with false nonchalant mirth, as quickly as a flash.
Nail-biter is unhinged most of the time and steps back in arguments to act quiet and tender;
Can’t stay for long enough or leave as soon as she should, she fails to deny anything at all, her first instinct is to surrender.
Nail-biter hyperventilates in tense and fraught situations and back-pedals before she can fight them away;
Rips her bucket-list to shreds, crushes her hopes and dreams to death as her flame of strength dwindles slowly but surely, to her dismay
Nail-biter regrets speaking too soon, not collecting her thoughts, not being sorry, not building strong relationships, not striving for revival, not trying to be better;
But it’s all okay now- she hardly feels, feels anything at all after she buried all of her humanness way too long ago; she’d prefer being a corpse forever.
So, listen intently to pretentious voices when they echo, “Keep an eye out for the nail-biter.”
Don’t try meddling in ceremonies of pity for the nervous foot-tapper, hair-chewer, lip-purser, the filthy nail- biter.
You won’t see her around anymore in classrooms or parks; she closets herself from plastic hearts she loved selflessly,
But she nonetheless hopes that you find glimpses of her in this poem that she wrote furtively in the dead of the night and the death of her soul, hopelessly.
~ Riddhi Chakraborty
Notes: This is essentially a vent poem because of all of this pent up angst that I just had to let out.
Swan's Labyrinth 