Emotional Minimalism

If you eat all alone

and you share nothing with anyone,

no excitement, no happiness—

then what do you name it:

detachment

or apathy

or loneliness?

Is it strength plated on porcelain?

Is it discipline simmered in silence?

Or is it a famine no one photographs—

a drought that happens

in the middle of abundance?

I sit with my own shadow

as if it were a loyal guest.

The spoon scrapes the bowl;

the echo answers back.

There is no witness to my hunger

except the walls—

and even they are tired

of holding up my composure.

They say independence tastes like iron—

like blood bitten back from the lip.

They say a woman alone at her table

is evolution,

is progress,

is the final thesis of freedom.

But tell me—

when freedom becomes a room

where no one knocks,

when your laughter has no resistance

to bounce against,

when your good news evaporates

before it reaches a name—

is that autonomy

or exile?

I have built a republic of one.

No coups.

No compromises.

No one rearranges my books

or interrupts my metaphors.

Yet some nights

my sovereignty feels like a border

drawn too carefully—

a map that forgot

to include rivers.

I chose this,

I remind myself.

Chose the uncluttered bed,

the unshared plate,

the silence that does not argue.

But choice can be a quiet tyrant.

It can whisper,

“You are safer this way,”

while gently confiscating

the possibility of warmth.

Perhaps loneliness is not the absence of people

but the absence of risk—

no trembling confession,

no misread signals,

no fragile hope laid bare on the table

beside the bread.

And yet—

there is a fierce glow

in standing unaccompanied.

In earning your own sky.

In not shrinking your hunger

to make someone else comfortable.

Maybe this is not apathy.

Maybe this is a rehearsal—

a sacred interval

where the self grows bones

strong enough

to carry both solitude

and love.

So if I eat alone tonight

and share nothing with anyone—

no excitement, no happiness—

do not rush to name it.

It could be loneliness.

It could be independence.

Or it could be a woman

learning the difference

between being untouched

and being whole.

It's a season not a lifelong sentence,

Even if it is- It's breathable. 

Perhaps, not apathy, 

Maybe integration! 

Of self with experiences that speak louder than the crowd of anomalies once belittled. 

You are not performing for invisible approval 

Or, flashy applauses, 

Neither are you confusing chaos with chemistry, 

Intensity with intimacy,

Nor are you contained.

You are not bounded to pounded hearts anymore that manuevers innocence. 

Solitude becomes restoration rather than repudiation. 

Your exile is your authorship now, 

The identity you write yourself,

You are not starving and feeding on crumbs once scattered for you that was beyond your approval, oh, such a distaste!

You have won a war that nobody sees, 

A war against invisible cage, 

A cage if negligence, ignorance and avoidance monitored by selfish crews - destined to over rule for a decade. 

There is a phase when peace feels sacred, 

And, solitude feels like abundance, 

Loneliness feels like protection,

And, peace isn’t anymore a preference It's a nonnegotiable, 

No more erosion of foundation but expansion of my residence. 

The authorship of self-imposed solitude is keeping every unwanted knockings on the door away! 

Your peace is your serenity that you protect earnestly...... 

Fierce is your conservation amidst the fragility of depletion that preaches you to remain open to every unnecessary changes.

©‌ Farheen Akter Bhuian Nancy 

Time Frame: 4.44 am, 23.2.26