Threads Of The Self Poem by Laya Bajpai

I wake to fragments of old stories
— voices echoing down narrow corridors,
a laugh, a sigh, a name.

Some days I am a ghost to myself,
wandering halls in search of belonging,
touching walls that know only memory.

Other days, I feel Whole —
a body, a pulse, a fierce fire
that flares in the small hour
between doubt and decision.

I plant seeds of tenderness in pain's shadow;
I water them with small acts of kindness,
a glance, a note, a forgiveness.

Sometimes the wind rips them out
before they root; sometimes
they bloom where none believed.

Emotions — my reluctant teachers —
teach me that strength is not the absence of ache,
but the courage to live within it,
to step forward when the heart trembles.

So I gather my scattered pieces each dawn,
rebuild, repaint, re-sing the same self
in ever-shifting light.

And though life will rend me again,
I rise —
not from glory, but from persistence,
not from certainty, but from faith
that the soul, in fragments, is still a tapestry.