Heroic Stuntwoman or Acrophobia

October 25, 2024

I look at the ground 
far, far below
I am nauseous, 
I sway- left, left right right left right 
I am  d     z        y  , my head is a            s
             i       z                                    w          l
                                                                i     r 
 It’s a sheer steep vertical drop. 
If the pathway I stood on gave way, 
I would f
                a
                     l
                         l
                            f
                               a
                                   l
                                      l
                                           d
                                            o
                                             w
                                              n
Far far below. I am petrified. 
I cannot walk. I am mortally terrified. 
I cannot look here, cannot look there
Cannot look anywhere anywhere anywhere
Keeping my gaze fixated on the surface 
beneath my feet, wilfully blinkered 
I walk, your name my mantra
safeguarding me from disaster
from annihilation. It is even more paralysing
if the surface below is glass. The only place
to look is straight up front. I am trying hard
to repress my screams. It seems interminable
this wait, this walk. I feel like a stuntwoman
performing acrobatics in a film. 
The wait is over. The relief palpable. 
I have reached the pinnacle of bravery
I look around. It is an ordinary day. 
Ordinary people go about routine business, 
unconcerned. I am on a bridge, I am 
in a mall, on a high balcony, on an
elevated metro station.

Shruti Sareen

Shruti Sareen, having studied from Rajghat Besant School and Indraprastha College for Women, has a PhD on 21st century Indian women's poetry in english from Delhi University which is forthcoming as Routledge monographs. She teaches in colleges/universities whenever she manages to find a job. Besides a plethora of pieces in journals and anthologies, her poetry collection, A Witch Like You, appeared in 2021. She has finished a fictional memoir The Yellow Wall and is engaged in writing short speculative fiction (Berserk Banshees?), love-letters on sexuality and mental illness (Sapphic Epistles?), with the germs of a speculative novella brewing in her head, and of course, more poetry!

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