Yesterday’s Newspaper

 

Folded, forgotten, and discarded. My stories, no longer deemed worthy of attention. Yet what is a newspaper if not a record of moments that mattered? I’ve captured innocence, heartbreak, and transformation in my creases, but you couldn’t carry the weight of those emotions, so you threw me away.

There was a time I stood at the gate on Diwali, waiting for my father to come home. That child believed in warmth, in return, in fireworks that lit up more than just the sky. Today, that same child exists only in memory, because the man who once meant the world to that child doesn’t bother to ask if I’ve eaten, or care if I’m even alive.

Love once felt eternal, pressed between palms, carried on streetlight walks and soft promises. But those promises faded. She got married. I was edited out.

My sibling, my anchor, turned silent. He found his own orbit, balancing marriage and paychecks so heavy at corporates that I became background noise. Pillars don’t always crumble. Sometimes, they just stop holding anything up.

I wasn’t naïve. I was innocent. I wasn’t weak. I was romantic. But time doesn’t always soften people. Sometimes, it hardens them. I began to speak brutally, not out of cruelty, but because I had no room left for lies. I watched my smiles fade, my warmth freeze, my heart calcify from touchless seasons.

I used to tell the truth like it was second nature. Now, I measure every word, scared of the ricochet. I once dreamed of the world with eyes wide open. Now, I just want out. I don’t seek destiny anymore, I avoid it. Not out of will, just because it's scary. Sports, adventure, exploration... all former lifelines, now distant shadows.

Even the protector in me, the one who stood besides everyone in battle, feels like the war itself. The listener I used to be to lean on is done, tired of my aches, drowning in his own, because none held a ear to hear me.

And me? The college kid who never missed a mic, never held back a feeling, now spills entire lifetimes into words that remain unspoken. I silence myself before the world can.

That young champ who once wanted to conquer the world, now just punches in and out. That traveller who wanted to scale every inch of the globe, now finds hard to time it between unpaid holidays. Stuck.

You didn’t ask what happened.
You didn’t want to know.
Because you chose to trash me.

But I am not irrelevant. I am residue. Proof that something once mattered.

And if the world ever grows quiet enough for you to notice the ache in your own chest, maybe you’ll remember, some headlines don’t disappear. They echo. Even if they’re written in yesterday’s newspaper.