My heart is a bento box

A poem on everything we carry and compartmentalise in our hearts

Source: Cosmos

A bento box is a Japanese-style lunchbox with small, neatly divided compartments—each holding a different dish.

Source: Amazon India

For Day 11 of NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month), this metaphor found me.
And I wanted to send it directly to you—warm and wrapped, like something made in the early hours of a Saturday.

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My heart, a bento box

1. The main meal

All the love I received since 17 January, 1997. 
My dad, groggy and tired, waking at 7 am to drive me to school. 
My mom, bringing Bournvita and breakfast in bed on holidays, asking me only to wake up, eat, and go back to sleep. My sister, saving up her pocket money to buy me cute, overpriced gifts from Archies—always more for me than for herself. 

The chocolate vanilla cake my friend baked me on my 16th birthday. 
The way all my friends showed up at the hospital even though our pre-boards were on. My neighbour who made me coconut mithais and Maggi as a post-school snack.

This is what I serve myself on days 
the world feels undercooked.

2. The pickles

The bullying. The roasting. The below-the-belt remarks I still can’t shake off—even after learning it was never about me, always about them. Friendship breakups. The ones I trusted but was wrong about.

Failing my maths and stats paper in college. Wasting ₹30,000 on a course I never even started. The vicious things said in anger by people who love me the most.

I don’t taste them every day,
but the stench—it lingers.

3. Sticky rice

The guilt of not becoming who I thought I would by now. 
The promises I could not keep, the ones I never even tried to. 
The stretchmarks, the cellulite, the ugliness of conditioning that clings to my skin. 

The investments I had to liquidate because I didn’t manage my money well 
even though I could write a book on Personal Finance 101. 
The boys I let touch me when I didn’t want them to. 
The times my voice never made it out of my body.

It's all cold now. And I know it won’t taste
any different if I reheat it, so I leave it be.

4. The dessert

The stranger at Starbucks who didn’t let me cry alone. 
The guy who complimented my hair and vibe at MKT. 
All the kind, careful words left behind by people who read my writing. 

The kiss from 2018. 
The DIY gift from 2021. 
The letters from 2015. 

All the meals fed to me by my friends’ mothers. 
The cups of coffee brewed by lovers. 
The time you tied my laces for me.

I don’t overindulge. I savour.
A piece of paradise sweetening the everyday.

5. The chopsticks

Things I had to learn to hold—kindness toward myself, 
self-preservation, forgiveness. Sitting with stillness. 
Letting people be who they are.

You ask me how I speak so calmly after chaos. 
How my hands stay steady when my mind is in shambles.
It’s because—my heart? It’s a bento box. 

I’ve learned to stack grief beside joy, 
fear next to excitement, 
peace alongside anxiety.

You can’t get rid of it—and I wouldn’t want to be the kid 
who throws away their lunch on the walk back from school. 

So I carry it all.

Most days, I manage.
But some days, I might reach for you—
just for a tissue, to clean up the spills.

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If your heart is a bento box too—tell me, what’s in yours?

PS I wrote this at 3 am and almost hit send right then. But I saved it for the morning, so you could unwrap it slowly, like weekend sunlight.