All Haunting Things and Two Additonal Poems

Srijani Rupsha Mitra is a writer and poet based in India. For Mental Health Awareness Month, Srijani has written a series of poems focusing on mental health, psychology, and therapy in the LGBTQ+ community.

All haunting things

All memories and love not spoken of

The need to touch another boy’s epidermis in the forest floor.

The zest, the saddening neural pathways. That still persists.

The childhood trauma. The fear of speaking out the queerness.

The real interrogation of family members.

Who are you? That very identity crisis

in a lonely place of mind as the highs and lows of tides.

That spirit lurching fear. The gut thumping tears.

The oceanic spur of silence. The quelling of voices queer.

The shackles raised. Indelible scars in memory that assail even today.

We shout now, really scream.

In the heightening uncanny feelings too, we try to gleam.

Let’s normalise therapy. And break the dysfunctional schemas.

Let’s self-affirm. Let’s build the unconditional positive regard. Bit by bit.

And love the mind, adore it the way it is.

On home

Endow us with a homely land

Away from the worldly agitations and

drudgery of demands

Diademed with a skin-soft light

Dense and bright. Quite away

from the vacant sequestration and the

madness of the mind.

Twirling and twisting to unknown lands

Questioning, arguing really beseeching for acceptance

In a world difficult to fathom.

Endow us with a home, that is the mind as a

blossoming garden bearing fruits and really growing

Effacing the unnecessary labels and burdening morose

Endow us with a home where our

struggles of brain are given priority,

not demeaned as dukkho bilash.

Endow with a safe vicinity, where there’s serenity and pride,

The heartiness of mental health grasping us tight.

Where wings of flight take us high, like divining

in our own startling power and rights.

Let desires thrive

Hungering hands. Desiring eyes.

The thrill of touch in the mind.

There are plethora of identifications and

Melancholies. Let’s preach it’s not anomalous but

Preserve the animality like some jewelled beauty of

Pietra dura. Let the hands hold, let love unfold in those

Neurons fearing the very desire.

Those disastrous sufferings of cerebellum giving in to the

Incessant ire. Elicited from the fire of wrath. Let’s transcend

The barriers and social norms that curtail our rights.

It’s okay to not be okay but still we would thrive,

It’s alright to break sometimes but what matters is how we

Bring ourselves back to the strength like upon the strength of

This vasudha. And embrace our minds as they are beautiful beings

Breathing life.

Srijani Rupsha Mitra is a writer based in India with works published in Mental Health Tings, The Blood Project and Barriers to Bridges. Her pronouns are she/her.