I Am Only a Human: A Reflective Poem

Think of the last time you used the phrase "I am only a human." More often than not, you must have used it along with another phrase "I make mistakes." Why is it that we linguistically define ourselves as human only when troubled by failure or after having made a mistake? Why not celebrate the richness of being human? Not because our experiences of the world are better than that of other creatures (you can't say for sure) but because our subjective experiences are only ours.

I am only a human.

I walk as the winds carry me.

I run out of galloping greed.

Greed for empty meadows -

carpeted with velvety grass,

With shy wallflowers among them

on the earth

because there are no walls.

These meadows are devoid,

Devoid of shadows

of other humans - 

long roads of humans.

I find there a rock

and myself to talk,

To blink humans away

and think of humanity.

I am dreaming of the future,

A future I want to see,

Not what I will.

I am only a human.

I am a human only.

I look at the clouds gliding by.

Shapeshifters they are.

Shifting my attention inward

in the sky of my mind,

I blink away reality

to think of another.

To enter that mortal faculty

that makes reality possible,

Perceivable.

So is it truly another?

Or a space that holds space 

for spaces other.

I think of the past,

Of Kronos' chronicles of the bygone millennia.

Humans have come

and have gone.

They have left withering traces

of memory footprints.

Each shapeshifted into societal apparel.

The gardener,

Muse,

Queen,

Peasant,

Officer,

Employee,

Mystic.

Each of their sojourns on earth's shifting soil

made a mark,

Left behind a footprint,

Or a lost teardrop.

Their - 

Our insignificantly significant

trajectories remain in the Hall of Collective Human Memory.

I am a human only.

I let the thorn in the rose prick a finger.

I dip my hands in the mud water 

beneath the lotus.

I panic when the unknown knocks.

I glitch under stress.

But, I also cry when wars

terrorise others.

I cry for the world

when no one looks,

When no one knows.

Only we are humans.

From what is conceivable to us,

We are uniquely sentient.

We strive for meaning

even when the universe 

doesn't openly offer one.

I call myself a human

not just when I make mistakes,

Fail,

Cry,

But for everything I am.

We are.

Only we are humans.

Gaurav Chandra Tuli