#emotionalsurvival poems

Shoaib Shawon Sep 16

Sometimes I feel my insides have dried;
I am only three percent alive—yet still alive.
Three percent alive is still being alive.

I won't say I’m doing terribly;
I've been lying dead for so long.
To be clear: only three percent of me breathes—
and even that is life.

No one speaks, as if nobody’s there,
but there’s one mercy: I don't have to hide how I feel.
Everyone assumes I’m gone.
No—perhaps I’m only three percent alive;
even that is being alive.

Someone left? I don't bring them back,
I keep no watch for anyone now.
I walk the world’s circumference, far from the center.
It doesn't hurt—I'm numb, as if already dead.
Truth is: I am still alive.
Even three percent is still life.

Some days, the light inside feels like it's dimmed to a mere flicker. It's not that you're completely gone, but you're operating on a fraction of what you used to be. You feel dried out, distant, and miles away from the center of your own world.

In these moments, it's easy to believe the narrative that you've disappeared entirely. But here is the gentle, stubborn truth: even a three percent existence is still an existence.

You don't have to pretend to be at a hundred. You don't have to perform vitality for anyone. There is a strange, quiet freedom in this minimal state. No one expects much from a ghost, and that can be a relief.

So if today you are only three percent, hold onto that. It is not nothing. It is a foundation. It is the single ember from which an entire fire can be rebuilt. The fact that you are still here, feeling this hollow, means you are still here to feel something else another day.

Be kind to that three percent. It is fighting for you.

#existentialpoetry #minimallife #threepercentalive #shoibshaonpoetry #melancholyverse #emotionalsurvival #lonelyyetalive #inneremptiness #poetryofsilence #modernbanglapoetry

Odd Odyssey Poet Jul 11

Bitter Bread & Blunt Knives

Two ties to a screeched past —still scratching
at the crust of blessings, just praying the miracle
comes wrapped like a lottery win. I've got creative
thoughts on command — I’m a poet in general,
drafted into survival, writing lines inside a starving
chocolate box, where sweet words can’t keep you fed.

They say they’ll pray for you, but it all feels like a
soft-spoken nothing; a sugar packet of sympathy that
dissolves too quick. Good intentions catch my eye
from time to time, but I’ve learned to watch the fine
print, because love these days comes with a return policy.

They spread your “daily bread” with butter, but the knife
I return is always too blunt, so when someone messages
out the blue and I ask, “Okay, what is it you want?”

Rung by rung, I hang here, along with the clothesline
of everyone’s ***** laundry ready inside; to air it out.
Willing to play into the villain — but never mind that
every villain was once just human, walking around
with personal vendettas to air out.

But I remember a child — nuzzled into sleep, dreaming
of the nozzle, not a pacifier… reliving wars they never
asked to see, in a world that’s grown cold enough to
make you breathe in snow and spit out fire, burning
down the globe just to feel some heat.

We own so little, yet feel owed so much.
We carry too much, but hold on to nothing.
All that we know… is that even our knowing
has become a debt we never asked for.

#spokenword #modernpoetry #emotionalsurvival #rawtruth #poetinpain #cynicalkindness #wordplay #narrativepoetry #streetphilosophy #urbanrealism

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