The Man in the Mirror

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”
― Bernard M. Baruch

Stay in love,

because falling in love

has a million published guides.

Stay in love with yourself

because self-love stands by you

no matter what.

Look at yourself

like you would look at

a kaleidoscope.

You are broken,

bleeding with emotions

and that’s definitely not

a reason for you to not

admire yourself

and treat yourself

with awe.

Let your chin

rest on your palm

to feel the warmth

of your skin

and the stories on it,

and rewrite the endings

with your mysterious fingerprints.

Accept.

Accept that perfection

is just a word, beauty is

just an abstract adjective,

sorrow is just a shade of life

and happiness is always yours.

Accept that you don’t have to

spend too much time

fitting the jigsaw puzzle.

Sometimes leaving empty spaces

is important for you to breathe.

Count the number of times

you hated yourself for doing something,

saying something or just remaining silent.

Imagine if you weren’t this hard on yourself.

Would there have been more peace?

You need to stay in love,

to let love grow, don’t fall out of

it during the downswing.

you owe yourself all the love in this world.

nobody loves you

the way you love yourself.

So stay in love,

and fall in love a little more with

yourself each time

someone says I love you.

Gather the ashes of a galaxy.

A handful of stardust.

The remnants of a thousand stars.

This is free from hatred,

like a river carving it’s path,

cliffs breaking into the ocean.

Let your human become what it may.

A deep breath now.

Inhale into it.

Warm air lighting up the insides.

Synapses igniting.

Neurons firing.

Your human is awake.

Like the whistle of wind through branches

to become the howl of a storm

Hear those first rattling breaths.

Become the fire of a dragon.

Born of the universe,

notmolded but grown.

A weak breeze to a hurricane.

Inferno wrought of sparks.

 You are more music than muscles and bones

where each note plays perfectly.

Inside strings of nerves

and hollows of synapses.

To create actions that weren’t written or decided for you.

To create a symphony unimagined by Mozart.

So that when you are deemed a sidekick by an orchestra,

and handed over a tambourine,

go up on the stage

and play your best version of ‘The Tambourine Man.’

Move out for a bicycle ride

up the highest hill in your town.

Pedal.

Not opening your mouths as you move uphill,

talk with your breath if you must.

Pedal.

Listening to the birds,

to the trees,

to the grains of sand beneath your tires,

talk.

Listen to what goes inside yourself.

The metal clinks , the waterfalls, the bomb blasts

that are drowned by the noise of city life.

Pedal.

Till you reach the top,

and then release.

Let all those sounds out from the compression of helplessness

into the valley of relief that spreads ahead.

Listen to the tune of your own band.

Sneak some chocolates in for yourself.

I said chocolates, and not cigarettes.

For once,

let ashtrays be eulogies.

Written to the gavel that you strike

when you’re quick to put yourself down,

And chocolates be lullabies

that turn you frown upside-down,

On days of sorrow.

Let yourself know

when your path leads to a dead end,

or a diversion,

or a U-turn.

Right where your car stops with screeching breaks,

around that corner, your own voice is that someone

who will write you a poem

like this one,

Acting as lyrics that perfectly settle

on the music in your muscles and bones,

to create a song worth living for.

– Clevon Peris for MTTN

-Photographs by Manan Dhuri and Jyotinder Singh