Deliverance, Maybe Poem by O Sudhir Janardhanan

Don’t ask me to
just, be myself
I want to be much more than myself


I was the first delivered
after I split my mother in two.
She did not stop screaming
even after I came through.
To date we suffer from bipolar disorder
splitting mania and depression
intermittently in no particular order

The rent of the womb for months ten
I repaid with emotions,
mother never owned then
Still I lie, connected to placenta
that refuses to be stripped
letting the real me escape and survive.
I seek the liquid to breathe and stay alive

Carried on raindrops
that burn to dissipate petrichor.
I wish to sit atop the last, every, rainbow
to look across, over, the other shore.
This world was born coloured red
wonder if, the other side
is monochromatic dread...


I want to be everything
that I never became
And all that everything, I never will become.