Who Am I?

Who am I?

Am I my mother's daughter,

woven from her silent sacrifices,

or my father's reflection,

bearing the echoes of dreams he never spoke aloud?

Am I my son's mother,

the shelter where his tomorrows take root,

or merely my husband's shadow,

walking beside another's light,

mistaken for my own?

Am I a homemaker,

measuring love in warm meals,

folded clothes,

and sleepless nights?

Or a professional,

wearing competence like polished armour,

while my heart wanders barefoot through forgotten gardens?

Or perhaps,

I fit nowhere at all,

too tender for a world

that applauds certainty

and mistrusts tears.

Yet I know this much...

I am a poem

still being written

by invisible hands.

Lyrics rise within me

like birds greeting dawn;

feelings stain my soul

the way rain awakens thirsty earth,

and every heartbeat

finds its own quiet rhythm in verse.

Love,

that glorious, unreasonable alchemist

has been my blessing

and my undoing.

It has turned every wound into a window,

every farewell into another beginning,

every tear into a pearl

the world may never see.

Call me foolish

for believing in impossible embraces,

for waiting when reason had long departed,

for loving with both hands open,

asking nothing

except the privilege of feeling.

I accept the name.

For I would rather spend one lifetime

burning with love

than a hundred years

untouched by its fire.

And if, one day,

I must leave this fleeting world,

let it be said

that I lived as I wrote,

and wrote as I loved:

fearlessly,

hopelessly,

beautifully;

a soul forever unfinished,

yet forever in love.

©®Madhumita