I am

It scares me when
someone asks me to ‘describe myself’
in short bios, for I’m
convinced 140 characters
can never be enough to
catch all the nuances of
my muchness. I do not
know whether to wrap myself
in carefully decorated enigma
that only
your Sherlockian gaze is capable
of lending closure to,
or to pluck my most beautiful pieces
and serve them to you in a platter,
with the rest of my insecurities
waiting to be scanned across barcodes of
validation and appreciation.
I am more than the
lives and deaths of dreams etched
in my skin, but less than the
in-betweens that go unseen,
I am more than adjectives made of
oxymorons, but less than the
layers of ifs and buts that wrap
my life in smug comfort,
I am more than a silken scarf of
possibilities but less than the malicious
noose of sensibilities,
I am more than my secret attempts
at finding love but less than all
the times I gave up  thinking
I’ll never be able to.
When the rest of the
world makes satires out of my
failures but I find myself
less than my hopes
that maybe someday somewhere
everything will be alright.

So when someone asks me
to describe myself in 140 characters,
I think, I smile and
then I just go with,
‘I’m a panda!”