Big Brother, a poem by Abhinav Aradhi

 

Big Brother

 

They’re all gone, you know.

Out of my life before I could tell them.

 

I would have killed them if not,

And I’d have enjoyed their cries for mercy.

Mercy is reserved for those with a mortal soul,

Not shallow ghosts living in the human world.

 

Darling, you must control your temper.

I could never marry such a cruel man,

Whose eyes light up with the wrath of a sinner

When those I call dear do not return the affection.

 

Am I to sit by idly, and let them turn you

Into their little puppet of a boy?

I can see the strings, you know.

They glimmer in the moonlight.

 

How can that be,

Unless you are already out my window…

You utter fool!

Leave from here, you rascal, what if the neighbors see?

 

What shall they do?

Stroke the grapevine gently,

Till the rumor ferments and gets drunk the whole populace,

And from which, like a permanent festival of Dionysus, they never recover?

 

You know very well I am not my sister,

And do not care for the theatrics like her.

 

Then why, pray tell, do you insist upon this facade?

This horrible urge to keep me buried beneath the surface,

Unable to raise my self more than an inch before

I am brutally shoved under again by your fear of the truth?

 

Sorry, love, but I cannot abandon all hope.

College will be the time.

You’ll see.

College will be the time.

 

And what if I should die by then,

Stabbed a thousand times by my impatient patience,

Then burned alive by the passion that ignites the soles of my feet,

And submerged in the sappiness of it all?

 

You’ll still be alive by college, I swear.

And that’ll be the time, darling, that’ll be the time.

 

What if it never gets better, sweetest?

What if once we get to college, we have to hide once again?

Don’t be a lovestruck fool.

(There’s always someone watching)

College will be the time.

(There’s always someone watching)