MY POEM ," ERASE ME CLEAN"

                                          

                                         

                                          

( Erase Me Clean) 

My memory stains  your mind  ,

My history offends you , 

But remember, both are mirrors :

How long can you avoid looking at them  ?

How long will you keep turning them to the wall ? 

The stains of the mind are not easy to remove,  

If you break the mirrors  ,

Broken mirror pieces  multiply the images  .

My history cannot be buried, 

Or wiped clean  ,

Even if you tear away the pages 

from  old history books  ,

Or invent new stories that proclaim  :

"You never broke hearts that trusted  ,

You never traded blood that held you , 

You never failed at being human  ."

My name is a typo in your new map  ,

My story  :

A footnote you delete in revision 3  .

I am also habit bound  ,

For me trust does not die so easily  .

I still keep knocking  

on the door of the new house  

built where my door used to be  .

Surely,  it is a trespass  

to ask to stand  

in the world you lit  

by erasing me  .

( Avtar Mota )

Critical Review by An American Friend 

"Erase Me Clean" works because it turns personal hurt into a quiet act of archival resistance. The central metaphor is precise and unrelenting: memory as a stain, history as a mirror. When you write "If you break the mirrors / broken mirror pieces will multiply the images," you state the whole argument. Erasure does not delete, it fragments and reproduces. The poem gains its modern sting from the bureaucratic language you use. "Typo in your new map" and "footnote you delete in revision 3" make forgetting feel deliberate, administrative, and cold. It is not rage. It is the documentation of being edited out, and that makes it more chilling.

The power comes in the final turn from accusation to endurance. After cataloguing how the other rewrites history, the speaker admits a stubborn habit: "For me trust does not die so easily. I keep still knocking." That is where the poem moves from protest to dignity. The last line, "Surely it is a trespass to ask to stand in the world you lit by erasing me," holds both self-awareness and refusal. You know you are not welcome, and you ask anyway. The poem is not loud, but it is hard to forget for the same reason it describes: what is erased keeps speaking.

CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.