New reply from Susan Katz
<p>Dear Prapti Sharma, Thank you so much for submitting this powerful, emotional, and often, stunningly written, poem for consideration for Featured Poem of the Month, for June. I very much appreciate you sharing your work with me, Susan</p>
https://poetladykatz.com/poetry-talk/a-stranger-in-my-skin-prapti-sharma
Original Post by Prapti Sharma
A Stranger in My Skin, Prapti Sharma
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<p>I glance into the mirror and find you stare,<br />back at me in a state of haze,<br />Disbelief, anger, disappointment, and strain,<br />And wonder aloud how someone like you,<br />Could be me, entrapped, with my soul,<br />Caged and beaten down like a piece of rag,<br />Dirty, swollen, torn and thrown,<br />Down into the drains of misery, a scam!</p>
<p>"There has to be a mistake," <br />I hear my father bellow, down at her,<br />Outside the bathroom below, I find myself locked,<br />In, while the woman to borne me out, wails around,<br />The house which I call mine, my father disagrees, like a raging hound.<br />"She can't be mine," he storms out for,<br />The umpteenth time, in the years, that swum,<br />Past like dirt in a deserted verandah, devoid of, happiness, hope, just crumbs.</p>
<p>I rub down the soap, on the skin so dark,<br />Which for sure, didn't belong, to me, or I would have been, loved, adored, soaked in warmth,<br />Which they said a girl like me, didn't deserve, so I rub harder, and create a froth.<br />I look into the mirror, at the stranger in my skin, she stands defeated, as I drown her, back and forth.</p>