Not an entrance | Sreedhari Desai

not an entrance

relationship after relationship
i make the same mistake
like it’s a lucky coin i keep spending
in the same broken vending machine.

lover, sister, friend, son…
i don’t even check the label anymore,
i just kneel.
i bend over backwards
until my spine becomes a question mark
and everybody else gets an answer.

i put myself second
so often i forget what first feels like,
forget it exists,
like a clean shirt
in a room full of soot.

i become a doormat…
not the cute kind with a joke on it,
not “home sweet home,”
but the kind that takes the whole city’s shoes
and says thank you
for the footprints.

i absorb the sop & filth
of their lives,
the spilled beer of their moods,
the greasy fingerprints of their disasters,
the mud they tracked in
from storms they refused to walk through alone.

and afterwards i lie there
wet with other people’s weather
and wonder
why they don’t love me clean,
why they don’t love me
like i’m anything but useful.

but here’s the part i don’t say out loud:
sometimes i like being useful.
sometimes being needed
feels like being wanted
if you squint.
sometimes i hand them my back
before they even ask
because at least then
i know what my role is.
because emptiness is honest
and honesty terrifies me.

i was an unwanted child…
my mother tried to miscarry me
with kitchen remedies...
red chilies, garlic, sesame, papaya,
the whole pantry turned weapon.
hot prayers over boiling water,
a womb arguing with god
through spice and superstition.

and i survived
like an apology that wouldn’t take.

so i learned early:
say sorry first,
say sorry louder,
say sorry for existing
before anyone can accuse you of it.

sorry for taking up space.
sorry for breathing.
sorry for having needs.
sorry for having a face.

i walk into rooms
already kneeling.
and yet…

somewhere else in me
there’s a woman who doesn’t kneel at all.

give me a canvas
and i don’t ask permission.
my palette knife is bold, fearless, true…
it doesn’t smooth things over,
it refuses to flatter,
it drags the ugly into light
and makes it stay there.

i load paint like a weapon,
a clean, bright threat.
i scrape back to the bones of the color,
i let the whole thing look dangerous
until it becomes honest.

in the studio
i don’t apologize.
i don’t make myself small.
i don’t say welcome.
i say: look.
i say: this is what happened.
i say: i’m still here.

and that’s the dilemma, isn’t it--
i can cut a sky open
with a blade of cobalt
but i can’t cut a person off
without feeling like i’m killing something sacred.

i cook delicious food
and i think: this will do it,
this will make me wanted.

i write poems of love
and i think: this will do it,
this will make me chosen.

i prioritize your needs
like a religion,
like a fever,
like a starving dog
protecting the hand that forgets him.

but wanting doesn’t grow
in the shadow of self-erasure.
love doesn’t come
to the person who keeps saying
i’m nothing, i’m nothing, i’m nothing
until the world agrees.

people don’t cherish a doormat…
they wipe,
they stomp,
they leave.

and if it isn’t fully frayed yet
they think it still has use,
still has one more season
of swallowing grime.

they call that “loyal.”
they call that “strong.”
they call that “good.”

and when it finally tears
they act shocked
that it bled.

so here’s the ugly gospel:
before i can be loved
i have to stop volunteering for erasure.
i have to begin by wanting myself…

not as a performance,
not as a poster on the wall,
but as a daily, stubborn, unpretty act:

standing upright.
saying no.
letting the floor get dirty
if the only mop is my mouth.

choosing myself
the way i used to choose everyone else…
without bargaining,
without begging,
without swallowing my name.

because until then,
no matter what i cook,
no matter what i write,
no matter how i polish my suffering
into something people can consume…

you will at most see me
as something still useful,
not loved…just not ruined yet.

and i hate that i know
how to be that.

but i’m done being an entrance.
lover, sister, friend, son…
wipe your feet someplace else.

i’m trying, finally,
to be a person…
the same way i paint:
knife out,
unflinching,
just me.