Skip to main content

She hopes, I exist

 


Diya Geomin is a grade 12 student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala, India. She wrote the following poem about a close friend of hers who is struggling with depression. Notice how the problems of the other person intertwine with those of the poet persona.

 

She hopes, I exist

By Diya Geomin

 

She hopes to see the better world

She hopes to know her true self

That nobody, even herself, knows 

She hopes to find a new fantasy 

To escape some time alone.

 

She hopes to hide under the stairs

To cry out her pain somewhere no one cares 

She hopes to escape into her books.

With the pennies she doesn't have.

 

She hopes to run away to an unknown place.

Full of surprises, waiting to be startled.

Waiting to be claimed, owned and used

Be with every lover her books could offer.

 

Yet to her dismay, she finds none.

It's only herself, all alone

Hoping for some twisted ways to escape

Hanging by a thread waiting to be dropped.

 

Just like me, she dreams

Dreams left unfulfilled 

Only to haunt her soul forever 

 

Oh, how ironic that you hope,

Unlike me, who let the shadows consume my mind.

You hope and hope until there is nothing left 

You believe in destiny, not yet proven.

You go with the flow and be exhausted.

 

Unlike me who's covered in the black ink

Hope is dangerous, it kills you from within.

Until all there is left are our tears

The tears of betrayal.

 

So, my love, I'm helpless like that

Waiting to be devoured by the darkness within.

So, while you do, please hope for me too. 


 xZx

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 21, 2024 at 7:38 AM

    Wow

    ReplyDelete
  2. Priyabrata NandaMay 21, 2024 at 8:08 AM

    Some of the readers of her poetry would in actuality find this poem to be their own saga, experiencing excruciating pain and hopelessness. For others, it could be self- discovery with eluding solutions.
    Overall, an excellent poem from an young sojourner.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Diya GeominMay 21, 2024 at 5:46 PM

      Thank you so much. It is indeed a perspective of a person who hoped too much but got nothing in return. But they still continue to encourage others to hope even though they got nothing from it.

      Delete
  3. parwatisingariMay 21, 2024 at 10:45 AM

    Very intense. Maybe she should speak to me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Diya GeominMay 21, 2024 at 5:42 PM

      Thank you so much for your appreciative words.

      Delete
  4. Lakshmi ShajiMay 21, 2024 at 8:17 PM

    Powerful words...

    ReplyDelete
  5. DawnanddewMay 21, 2024 at 8:37 PM

    Beautifully crafted words! It's difficult to find such friends today. The lines are deeply melancholic and reassuring.

    ReplyDelete
  6. VinayMay 21, 2024 at 9:45 PM

    I love the last line - I'm helpless like that, Waiting to be devoured by the darkness within - it has as deep sense of sadness to it, a sense of reality about hopelessness and wonder. Very moving..

    ReplyDelete
  7. Liz A.May 21, 2024 at 10:04 PM

    Moving poem.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousMay 22, 2024 at 10:23 AM

    This poem reminds me of a thought that was written on the bulletin board of our classroom in Sawan. It said- " Never lose hope. Hope is a rope that swings you through life". Being from a Gurjar ethnicity, it was not easy to have a warm rapport with my teachers. So once my mathematics teacher read that thought and told me very sarcastically-"Beta! Tum bhi HOPE karte rahna, ek din zaroor maths mein pass ho jaoge".And guess what? I failed over and over again😊. Somethings never change, you see. Nostalgia strikes!

    Yours Last bencher:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 22, 2024 at 11:27 AM

      A lot of things could be different if we talked personally with people concerned. For example, if you had developed some sort of a rapport with that teacher, the entire situation would have been a lot different.

      Yet, I'm happy you're able to smile over these things now. All the best. I wish I could talk to you personally.

      Delete
    2. Diya GeominMay 22, 2024 at 4:40 PM

      This poem is about two people who are similar in character except for their perspective of hope. One of them is very hopeful while the other hoped too much and got nothing in return even though she encourage the other two hope. Because, could it be just her or is everyone unlucky in life?...

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalMay 22, 2024 at 6:07 PM

      If you start establishing contacts with people, you'll realise how sad most lives are!

      Delete
  9. Pradeep NairMay 22, 2024 at 12:00 PM

    Melancholic and intense.

    ReplyDelete
  10. marietta pereiraMay 22, 2024 at 6:31 PM

    The poem tugs at your heart strings.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some
8 comments
Read more