Numbness Towards The Collective


The sadness in my eyes has numbed the empathy towards the pain of the collective. 

I no longer read the unspoken words of the kid lying beside the highway beneath the foot over bridge, I don't translate the language of hunger and try to reach them. 

I have become numb. I don't understand the silence of homeless people who are always looking for a meaning in their rootless lives, 

I don't recall their cries for help. 

Who are counting stars with an empty stare. 

I no longer feel deep for them. 

I think my grief and loneliness has made me shallow.

 I have grown into a stoic carefree person. 

But, did I ever want to be like this?!

A rigid mountain with a calm demeanour?! 

My heart has become an alter of only one echo.

I remember the day when my heart was broken. 

When it was pierced fiercely with no swords but shields....What was meant to protect attacked me. A shield if wielded to wrong hands can tear apart us.

It frightens me- this digression of will, 

Such shrinkage of compassion- within me!

Not because the world is less corrupt, or less polluted, or hurts any less,

But, my own cuts have grown so large, so immense, 

That every other tragedy feels less violent! 

It collapses into eclipses, 

Bypasses all shadows in the world. 

Yet, I do not feel illuminated. 

As if a luminous hole swallowed me into its pits! 

Now, I am blind to all other things! 

I can't see.

I can't sense. 

I can't feel. 

I can only feel a strong sense of elongated loneliness. 

Perhaps, this is how wounds survive, 

It doesn’t let us heal. 

We go back to the spiral. 

Long and dark, 

Dark and long.

Depressed. 

Probably, we carry the wounds of generations until it feels so heavy that we can no longer carry.

Perhaps, the burden of unspoken grief overloads our senses that we become numb to other's pain and keep searching for a meaningful life amidst the chaotic anomie of civilization. 

Is this modern alienation?! 

That to remain safe we have to overlook every other problems?! 

Is it acute loneliness?! 

That we build entire universes within ourselves? 

That we remain and belong to only ourselves?! 

That we are so busy into self-care that we forget to care for others?! 

Why such insatiable hunger for care?! 

As if generations preceding us were unfed!

As if the ancestors prayed for our self-censorship and self-centeredness. 

As if we were meant to be such segregated! 

But, perhaps,  we were never meant to be alone. 

We were meant to heal each other through understanding the signs of silence. 

Perhaps, mending another broken heart can we recover, we feel the sense of value by saving them. 

Is it a virtue or again another regime of self-care?! 

Loving others make us feel loved and cared! 

Perhaps, 

Perhaps!!! 


©® Farheen Akter Bhuian 

Timestamp: 9.55 pm, Chittagong, H-3305, Home


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