Picture Perfect

I am a camera shy person or maybe I should say the camera makes me a shy person. I've gone a clicking, smiling the best of my smiles, trying to look the best of my appearance but when the snapshot eventually lands up in my hands I feel like ripping it apart because I never look the way I want to look in the photograph. But it isn't the fault with the camera nor the fault of the hand pressing on the button, the entire fault lies with my being. There are times, when I silently sit in front of the altar in the mornings and ask God to grant me a beautiful look that will send loving glances towards me whenever I walk past people. There are nights when I dream that I actually get up in the morning looking like a princess. But the image that greets me every morning in the bathroom is of the same dejected, rejected being splashing water as if the drops would splash away all ugliness from that face. Every mirror I pass through, even the glasses of the showcase around the dingy bars where you can see your hazy image I see myself peering into it as if hoping for a transformation to have happened in the few seconds I missed seeing myself.
People who know me might be thinking of me as some really obnoxious being so much filled with myself and nothing else but what they don't know is that when I caste those looks at myself, I am actually checking on myself and waiting for that picture perfect moment.

Hope

When the days are dark and dismal
when shadow's all that envelops your world;
when tears becomes your constant companion
when life sheds its harshest weather
when it rains in your heart
when everything is set against you;

A tiny something flutters deep
down in the gutters of one heart.
It's one thing that remains perpetually
in the core of the hardest being
as well as the softest of the creature,
this thing called HOPE.

HOPE gives one the reason
to continue living when death
has knocked one cold and hard;
gives one the blanket of assurance
when the cold bare truth hurts one;
makes one smile amidst tears.

What do I do I know not!

Do I not cry when tears sting my eyes and find their way down my cheeks eroding all trace of small joys hidden in the pores of my being? Do I not sigh with pain piercing deep in my heart? Do I not crease my forehead into deep furrows of anguish when people hurt the inner core of my existence?
My existence is a shadow, a dark shadow and all I perceive around me is darkness, blinding darkness of sorrows buried so deep that no imaginations of joy can uproot that.
There are times when my selfish self awakens from its deep slumber and propels me to carry out task my conscience would never approve of. But why do people forget that I am just a human being and I’ve the basic human urge….of acceptance and greed for happiness.
I’ve gone a-begging for happiness at the doorstep of God; he gave me a small purse and told me not to open it till I met someone who would shed same tears as mine.
Well God, I am still searching for that ocean of tears to send my tears of anguish so that I can eventually get what you always planned to give me. Till then, I guess I have to continue shedding the tears I am supposed to shed.