they say.
So I emptied myself.
To hear the one who's
Been silenced for decades.
I scraped my past.
I scraped my future.
I scraped my present.
Just to hear the noise,
I emptied myself to
the core.
and when I became empty
enough, there wasn’t
any noise.
silence sat heavy-
dense, unmoving,
like truth refusing to speak.
Disappointed, distressed,
and in retaliation-
I started filling up again-
memories, guilt,
half-read books,
faces that never stayed.
Slowly, the noise returned.
Not hollow this time,
but humming-
a strange vibration,
a forming self.
The more I filled,
the clearer it became-
from clutter to chord,
from noise to note.
constantly shaped and
reshaped-
Learning, unlearning
and relearning-
till Shiva in me made a
round trip as Nataraj
to force my voice
sound like mine.