Ashish Kumar Singh
​

Self-Portrait As A Survivalist

​By profession,
I’m nothing. When I was young,
mother said, be whatever you want,
but what was in her mind,
she did not tell, only
it should keep you safe.
So, I choose to become an impostor.
On the playground,
I tried to be them, the certified boys,
would mirror their movements
as shadow does to a body.
In the classroom,
I sat with my thighs set wide apart
and joked in a language
I heard them use. But, a lie is a lie
and a shadow a mere deceit.
A giggle and the mirror shatters.
Once, as a punishment,
the sport's teacher refused
to let us play and we sat in a circle,
determined to kill time,
when a boy said,
you sometimes act like a girl
and I knew I’d fail in my endeavour.
Imagine, years of dedication
turned to ruin. Oh mother,
nothing in this world is without teeth
and how foolish it was to believe
a shadow could desire to be
the whole body.
Since then all I wanted was to be
called grown, to know
I survived the worst. After all,
what is survival if not breath
after breath after breath.

---

--
Ashish Kumar Singh (he/him) is a queer poet from India with a Master’s degree in English Literature. His works have appeared- or are forthcoming- in Passages North, Chestnut Review, Fourteen Poems, Foglifter Press, Banshee and elsewhere. Currently, he serves as an editorial assistant at Visual Verse and reads poetry submissions for ANMLY.