Collage of Memories

All those pictures in photo books; Smiling?

and I remember not a single one

For memories are video collages I look at from afar

and I suppose its so for everyone

The most faded of them; a boy in pulled down pants,

held still by the strong hands of a grown man,

with a wooden stick slapping against bare skin.

The three year old looks with hope to a woman near him,

she looks on with a faint smile. thwack! thwack! on and on and... on

Open textbooks and pen in hand, he hopes for midnight

not because he hates those books, they are afterall his only solace.

His ears listen in on everything in the other room,

dreading even a grunt from the same grown man.

He wishes with the hope of marking that day uneventful

praying nothing happens, praying that day just goes by.

Those nights the grown man drinks, the boy pretends to sleep.

Waiting with fear as his only companion, for the moment he gets dragged to be ridiculed.

He is made to hear all the abuses meant for the woman and her family, as she

shuts herself in an other room crying and he stands... with his head bowed.

Never understanding what his mistake ever was. He holds himself together,

but he knows, he has to cry so that the grown man can smile,

so that the charade can end. Just to begin again on an other day...

The woman wakes up the next day, she’s the victim or so she says.

The boy is forced to wear a smile, for her, for the world outside.

She stays inside, reminiscing her moments of joy 

as the boy wonders whether he will ever have his reprieve.

She tells him to never say this to anyone as she calls her family to talk.

Abandoned by all, he talks to himself. For no one else ever listens to his words.

She tells him this is what love looks like and he believes love to be grotesque.

These weren’t even the times when he made a mistake, 

for God forbid, that ever happen

His younger self would have had to scrounge for the stick,

the stick he would get thrashed by. Smaller the stick, the more beatings he would get.

But as the boy grew older the grown man understood words hurt more than wood.

He understood that the heart bleeds worse than one’s skin.

He made sure to remind the boy that every morsel of food he ate

was the grown man’s excrement and he better be thankful for it.

God seemed to love this boy, for on top of all this he made him diseased.

Eight years of his life he spent with wounds and scars, 

shamed by the ones who called themselves his family, his friends.

Their looks of disgust, their fake sympathy and their reminders of the burden they carry.

The boy learnt to never ask for help, to stand alone...to hate the world.

His nine year old self learnt to cut gauze stuck in his own wounds,

armed with scissors blunted by his own skin.

And so on goes this collage of memories...

There came an other soul, a kid and he’ll love him or so the boy thought.

He tried a lot, but love for him was what the grown man taught.

He bullied the kid to show his power, for he mistook anger for care.

The boy started seeing his heart turn to stone, and 

with time the boy realized he was growing into a man.

Not to say that the boy was deprived from those sparse moments of praise,

but it always felt like a butcher caressing his sheep and saying he cared.

The boy had become a caged bird his captor fed in the day, 

only to spend the nights... plucking each feather away.

The boy always wanted to be mid journey, dreading school and dreading home.

He wanted to walk away but he didn’t have the strength, always with a foot on his neck.

It took him years of fighting with thoughts of death to choose life,

It took him years to stand up on his own foot and voice his right.

It felt wrong to go away by himself, he couldn’t leave the woman and kid behind

cause somewhere in his heart he still cared, he still wanted them saved.

He couldn’t bear to care for the grown man, too much torture, too much pain.

So he pulled himself together, made his way. And then

he gave his hand and they slapped it away, they said go away, you; we prefer to stay.

The boy learnt that day to not care, for all they do is carve his heart out

to crush it as they walk away.

He was eighteen and his family was this collage of memories.

Author's Note

The writing is kinda unpolished as its the first draft.

Reviews

[Malvika]

i like all of your poems but this one might be your best work
it just touched my heart and you told the story so beautifully and not compromising on any other aspect
its a masterpiece.
we all have memories and we wish to be in someone's memories but the thing is not to let our past define who we are because those our just small fractions of our big life.
my fav line
*It took him years of fighting with thoughts of death to choose life*

[Jade Stone]

This poem was so amazing your a great writer.