Self Portrait with Psychology

A Poem by S. Rupsha Mitra

The subject seeps in,

  and navigates like smoke,

 not leaving any portion

 of the body like water. 

I wish to become aligned with the textbooks

 and reciprocate my feelings to defense mechanisms

How I love to know what humour has to say to me,

 what about intellectualisation, 

what of the ideas in rationalisation.

 I take words and try to go back to the origins of it instead 

aren’t I supposed to do a psychoanalysis.

 In dream interpretation, I spend revisiting Freud’s documents, 

the urge for free analysis never ends. 

How I portray myself with books all over, piled up,

 I look into the mirror

 and see a figurine so calm, 

specific, with an aura of opulence about it

, I touch that, I so want to be that unbothered, bared soul

 deep into psychological diaphragm of things.

 Forgetting the bridges, gaps and chasms,

 focusing on the psychic histories 

and complex buildings

 in the mind deeper 

into that picture 

of the body as a spring, 

The mind as a flowering garden.

Meet the Writer

S. Rupsha Mitra is a student from India with a penchant for everything creative. Her writing can be found in literary magazines like Birmingham Arts Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, and Mekong Review.