Being Speechless

I went through 

Two weeks of horror 

Of being speechless

As my psychiatrist 

Misdiagnosed my 

sleep deprivation for 

a week as psychotic 

The drugs he prescribed 

Made me speech impaired 

It affected other organs too

I struggled to talk to anyone 

I feared if I could ever speak again

Even as the psychiatrist gave

Assurance of regaining voice 

As my friend enquired about 

The nature of the medicines 

And that it didn't improve 

The psychiatrist told me to stop using 

The medication in three days 

Slowly, I could talk again 

I was stuttering and 

Words were not clear

I had to tell repeatedly 

Loudly for others 

To understand what I meant 

An auto driver mistook me 

For a drunkard, and refused

To give me a ride to the market 

I had to convince him that 

It's the side effect of psychiatric drug 

I had to tell the same to everyone 

I interacted with in shops and in public 

Though it improved significantly

It wasn't the same and I needed recovery 

Thankfully my cousin took me to meet 

A new psychiatrist, who changed 

My medications to less potent ones 

And I was able to talk fluently again 

This poem is based on my real-life experience. I realized the importance of being able to speak to convey things to the people around me. Psychiatric/psychotic drugs can affect the functioning of different abilities and even organs of humans. The wrong diagnosis by the psychiatrist led to me being unable to speak properly for a couple of weeks. But those two weeks was the most challenging period of my life. Those drugs affected my sexual organ too. The psychiatrist told me about the side-effects of the drugs after my friend asked about them. There are side effects for even medicines given in mild dosages. My aim is to come out of the medication. The number of medicines and dosages has been reduced over the last three years. But still, a long way to go. I am under treatment for depression. The image was taken by Noah Buscher .

Black Beauty

Black Beauty written 

With the image of a horse 

Reminded me of the book 

I learned in my school 

While I was in the salon 

I have been there before 

The new hairdresser

Looked familiar 

I initiated a conversation 

And I remembered 

A salon bearing the same name 

Near where I used to live earlier 

My father used to take me there 

For haircuts as a school kid 

Where I had my last haircut

In my twenties 

He told me that it's the same brand 

I asked about the other man 

He was soft-spoken and friendly 

But he lost his voice somehow 

I remember him showing me the 

Facilities in the salon after upgrading 

And inquiring about life 

Whenever I visited the salon 

That man was the uncle

Images from the past came to my mind 

There's always a special bond 

With the hairdressers 

The stories they tell while cutting hair

They remember individual hairstyle 

They're the local vocal classifieds 

I used to look for Black Beauty 

But their board was gone 

A few years ago

I found it again

A piece from my past 

It was nostalgic to find an old salon relocated. For years I thought that they shut the salon. It is more intriguing that I have been to their new salon multiple times. At that time the hairdresser was a migrant from another state and spoke Hindi. I didn't notice their brand name. This time I saw the name and the picture of black beauty. It brought back everything from memory. The hairdresser was also glad to know that I was an old customer at the old place.  The images were taken by Erik-Jan Leusink and Agustin Fernandez . Thanks to Unsplash.