POETRY : Anxiety by Sanjhee Gianchandani

Silent tears scream of pain in the soul

Disinterestedness and detachment from all things known

a messy life and toxic relationships she has borne

No medicine has known the cure

Yoga and meditation might help they say

Counselling is still out of bounds

Even in this time and day

Tears roll down her cheeks for no plausible reason

Low days continue across the seasons

Dreads the lonely nights in her room

When she needs to give answers to herself

Woolf peeks from her bookshelf

their sorority lies in stream of consciousness

Not in the drowning; one hopes

Both lived very complicated lives

Both had suppressed feelings and thoughts archived

People fail to understand mental pain

for it cannot be seen, heard, or touched

And she efficiently hides it behind her smile

But her heart is heavy with all this weight

Every new person she alienates

Insecurities cloud up her mind

She despises unplanned meetings and uncertain finds

Perhaps this is why romantic liaisons miserably fail

She has a lot of baggage attached to her tail

Her emotional needs make her tenacious

And the darker sex abhors this kind of fuss

Grammar pedantry syndrome and OCD tag along

And in this she sees nothing awfully wrong

'Great poetic work arises from bouts of despair'

she had somewhere once read

But this seems more than just ‘divine discontent’

Something is eating away my heart

She remembered telling her mother

‘It’s just work stress, don’t bother!’

Gnawing self-doubts at day and

disorientation at night

Every day she picks up this inward fight

reads Eliot and Yeats for inspiration

for she knew that engaging would aid her

more than outright negation of feelings thus

She pens down her feelings as a last resort

After days of agony and sleepless nights

a fraction of the grey clouds drift

The leaves seem greener now

The world seems a bit better now

She writes, continuing her tryst.


About the poet 

Sanjhee Gianchandani holds a Masters’ degree in English from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi and a CELTA from the University of Cambridge. She has previously worked as an English language assessment specialist and currently works as an ELT editor in the K-8 space. In a parallel universe, she would rather be living in the hills, sipping coffee, reading, and writing poetry.