Wounded Souls

-art and piece by Shubhangii Joshi

I thought I'd found a way out of the darkness

But soon I realized it lived deep underneath me;

Underneath my skin, in my veins, running through each and every cell

The demons I feared resided inside me

I kept myself surrounded by people to escape the darkness

But never realized that it was perpetually along my side.

Being locked up in a dark room was no more something I feared

But being locked into the darkness I possessed was.

I looked around to find the colourful, jolly faces of my friends and family

And I wondered if they possessed any of that darkness.

I kept looking at the world through these black and white glasses

And I soon realized that each one of these people possessed the same darkness

All of them carried scars

All them too afraid to show their dark sides, they buries their souls deep into the soil of denial

"Is this the solution though?" I asked myself.

Only then did it hit me that not everyone is afraid of their darkness, they are afraid only of the exposure of their wounds, their weaknesses, their insecurities.