Hot— Poem About A Blistering Compliment from A Stranger!

“You’re hot!”

Screams a voice in the dark
A shadowy figure stops me on my way,
to tell me loudly and insidiously,

“I am hot”

A sensation.

A weather.

A temperature.

Takes me a moment to gather,
to come to my senses rather
What just happened, I wonder
And there it comes, my epiphany

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“Hot”

Oh, I feel all degrees of it
I feel the heat rising in my marrow
But you see I hold it together
as the lane looks dark and narrow

The heat arising from that word burns my skin
Though looks like blush, it’s my acidic anger akin
In a blip, a compliment turns into an insult
But my wrath rests as my reason must come first
My telomeres shrinking from the anger I repressed
silence envelops me, and yet remains the palpable stress

In a moment, stress switches its place with fear
And what was just mine, now becomes his,
The lines get deeper on his temples,
He saw fate in my eyes, I thought
Panic engulfs the whole air
A screech and sudden retraction,
he zooms away in second gear.

He flees the scene like the coward he is
I feel victorious as if, as if…

I am the cause…

I turn around, just to cut my joy short without a doubt
What changed my fate wasn’t my anger
but silhouettes of unsuspecting men walking about.

Image source: Jacob Varghese from studio India, Free On CanvaPro

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