Colourful, papered, ribboned surprise.
Cardboard smell.
Prickly tinsel.
A mass-manufactured card,
with one Labrador puppy.
Photoshopped.
Why do you hide behind
the supposed-to, the supposed-to-nots?
Instead unwrap the tinsel.
Tear away-
the ribbon, the carton,
the mass-manufactured card,
the circled sticky tape.
I don’t need that Labrador puppy
When your eyes might be like one’s.
Capture yourself in natural light,
Don’t edit, don’t add those vintage filters;
not the retro ones, nor the ones that make you look
like a ghost of your true self.
Don’t deliver yourself to me in a gift wrap.
Don’t show me a hazy picture of
what you could, would, should be.
Just be to me the gift that you are,
a simple present presented in the present.
©vaidehi patil
Good one V
Thank you, Trisha