Neurodivergent and proud (poems by Marcella Boccia)
In Neurodivergent and Proud, Marcella Boccia, an Italian poet in Srinagar, weaves a lyrical exploration of identity, intensity, and defiance. With echoes of Yeats’ mysticism, Tagore’s spirituality, and Neruda’s raw passion—shrouded in a dark, haunting beauty—this collection delves into the depths of living with borderline personality disorder. Set against the turbulent backdrop of war-torn Kashmir, these poems mirror the fractured landscapes of both place and psyche, capturing the weight of emotions that refuse to be tamed. Through verses that oscillate between tenderness and storm, Boccia embraces the chaos of her mind as both a burden and a gift, rejecting the labels imposed upon her. A thread of longing weaves through the collection—an enduring, platonically charged connection with a Kashmiri poetry professor, a love story written in silence and distance. At once a declaration of selfhood and an act of poetic rebellion, Neurodivergent and Proud is a manifesto for those who feel too much, for those deemed too intense or never enough, for the wild-hearted souls who find solace and strength in words. Boccia’s voice burns like an uncontained fire, a song that will not be silenced.
Episodes
Love does not come to rescue mefrom the depths of my soul’s tempest—it does not offer its hands,glowing like stars above the chaos.No, love does not save.But it holds me,tenderly,in the way shadows hold the earthwhen the sun has gone to rest.It does not extinguish the firesthat burn within me,nor still the storm in my chest—it watches,quiet as a ghost,as I spiral into myself,a...
Beneath the weight of dreams,I scream—a sound swallowed by the hollow night,a cry that never escapes my throat,its edges sharp like broken glass,but muffled, lost in the softness of a lie.In the silence of my room,where the walls are made of shadows,I am crushed by the weight of my own breath,each inhale a struggle,each exhale a surrender to the dark.The pillow beneath my headbecomes a...
In the hour when the sky bleeds into the earth,I die—not in the silence of a distant night,but in the trembling breath of dawn,where life and death make love,their bodies woven in the threads of shadows.I die in the arms of a memory,one too fragile to hold,its weight a river that cannot be crossed,its waters too bitter to drink.The past pours over me,its fingers leaving bruises,eac...
I lay myself down in the arms of nothingness,where shadows breathe like lovers,and silence carves its name into my soul.The void holds me close,its cold fingers trailing along my spine,each touch a whisper of the world undone.No stars hang in the sky,no moon to guide my sorrow,only the weight of empty promisesthat echo through the chambers of my heart.I have forgotten what it means to dre...
Poetry is the breath I stealfrom the silence of the earth,a thief who robs the night of its secrets,and leaves me trembling,naked in the light of unsung stars.It is the fire I drink,its heat turning my veins to flame,until my skin crumbles into ash—and I rise again,reborn in words that echo in the shadows.Poetry keeps me alive,when the world falls silent,when the weight of history crushes my b...
The day I got lost, the sky turnedits face away, no longer blue,the clouds wrapped their bodies in the scent of ash,whispering secrets only the wind could hear.I wandered, not knowing where to go,but feeling each step echo through me,as if my feet were tracing forgotten roadswhere names had been erased long ago.The earth beneath me was a stranger’s touch,cold, unfamiliar, a tremor in the soil,and...
I drink the darkness in small sips,savored like wine from a shattered glass,its bitter taste a quiet kissupon the lips of a haunted past.The moon bleeds a pale, tired light,casting shadows that twist and crawl,whispering secrets to the night,secrets I cannot recall.In the hollow of my chest,a storm brews, silent and fierce,I cradle my soul in its unrest,swallowing sorrow with every t...
The silence hums beneath my skin,a thousand whispers stitched to bone,echoes of wars only I have fought,blades of memories I have not known.I carry scars that no one sees,etched not in flesh, but in the mind,where shadows paint with tender easethe stories that were left behind.The world looks at me and wonders whymy smile trembles like the autumn leaves,but it does not know the weight I hide—the tea...
I am not my pain,though it has worn me like a second skin,etched in the deep lines of my face,woven through the silence between my breaths.It has touched my bones,taught my heart to breakwith the precision of a forgotten lover's kiss,but I am not its prisoner.I am not the scarsthat mark my flesh like a mapof every war I’ve fought within—each one a victory,each one a woundthat whispers its story in ...
My hands tremble,as though they hold the weight of the worldin their bones,a tremor passed downfrom the shadows of my ancestors,their silence echoing in the pulse of my skin.They shake in rhythms I cannot break,as if the air itself conspires to pull them apart,to scatter my soul like dust to the winds.The mind,oh the mind,it screams,a fire that cannot be tamed,a beast clawing at ...
Sometimes, I want to sleep forever—to let the weight of the world slip off my bones,to sink into the stillness of a dreamwhere time dissolvesand I am no longer boundby the aches of waking.In the dark, I stretch my hands toward silence,toward the soft, unspoken lullabyof an empty sky.I long to be nothing,a shadow caught in the twilight,a thought abandoned before it is born,a whis...
I shift through hours like a ghost,passing through spaces that hold no weight,where the clock is a thief,stealing minutes that dissolvebefore I can taste them.The air is thick with waiting,with words that never reach my lips,like smoke held in the lungsof a broken promise.I swallow them whole,letting them burn their way downinto places too dark to remember.Each shift is a battle,not with time, b...
There is a silence in meso vast,it consumes the stars—a gaping mouth,hungry for what cannot be found.It tastes like dust,like the ash of a dreamforgotten in the heat of waking.I reach into it,fingers trembling,but the void has no form,no edges to grasp.It is a weightless thing,like a shadow without a body,like a breath that never leavesbut refuses to enter.I am the emptiness I crave,a h...
I walk the earth tonight,bare,stripped of the fleshthat once held me together,a trembling silhouette in the dark,where the moon is a questionand the stars burn like unspoken secrets.There is no skin to shield me now—no walls to guard the heart,no breath to pull me back from the edge.I am all raw,all exposed,a wound that has learned to whisper.The air is colder here,as if the night itselfknows t...
There is a world that lies beyond the edgesof black and white,where shadows stretch like hungry rivers,and the sun does not rise or fall,but hangs in the air like a question,unanswered, suspended.We are born into it,this land of unspoken truths,where the lines we draware never straight,and the colors we seekmelt into the dusk,no longer separate,but one,in the belly of the night.Here, there is...
There are days when I am no longer me,when my skin wears thin like paper,and my bones tremble beneath the weightof a world that calls but cannot reach.I slip through the cracks of time,my breath swallowed by the silence of forgotten things.I disappear into the shadow of my own name,where even the stars grow tired of lighting my path.The mirror breaks beneath the weight of a facethat has forgott...
Once, it was a whisper,soft as silk,a murmur in the shadowed corners of the heart,caressing the edges of doubtwith the gentleness of a breeze.It spoke in the language of light,and I listened—I listened to its sweetness,believing it was enough.But love, when it chooses to burn,does not ask for permission.It ignites from within,turning the flesh to tinder,the soul to ash,and the heart to a flam...
It is not the fury of a storm,raging in the belly of the sky,nor the crack of thunder breaking the bones of the night.It is quieter,a flame that eats the soul from the inside,turning breath to smoke,soul to ash.I carry it in the hollow of my chest,where once there was room for love,now only the gnawing hunger of rage.It is nameless—unspoken—and yet it howls like the wind in empty streets,like footstep...
I write to you with hands stained in dusk,fingers trembling with the weight of ash.The sky is no longer sky—it is a wound split open, spilling fire into the bones of the earth.What words survive in the mouth of ruin?What verses can be born from the throat of war?I have only this ink, heavy as blood,only these letters, scattered like bonesin the silence between explosions.The rivers drink t...
They do not fall like rain,wild and reckless upon the earth.No, they descend in silence,one by one,like forgotten prayers slipping from trembling lips.They salt the cradle of the dead,bathe the wounds time dares not touch,carve rivers into withered handsthat once traced lullabieson sleeping brows.A mother’s tears do not dry.They turn to stone,to shadow,to the weight carried in the hollow of her...
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