I always wanted to fall in love
With someone I can send poems to.
The sad poems, the happy poems
The pretentious poems, the poems
With an identity crisis, depressed poems
Bad poems written by good people
And good poems written by predators.
There is only so much your own poems
Can tell. Sometimes, only borrowed words
Can help you describe the shape of that one
Face you would want to see after your cat dies
And when that face walks away from you and
Your dead cat to walk the dog of a shiny new thing
In their neighbourhood, you can come back to your
Empty apartment and cry yourself to sleep after
Reading every poem you ever sent them.
You will realise there are poems that you will never
Be able to read without thinking about them.
Don’t read them for now. Let the poems reclaim
You slowly. They have a way of never leaving, you know?
While you wait, find a few poems which you can slowly
Unwrap from the memory of that afternoon
Spent trying to skip stones on a forgotten
Lake whose edges were lined with singe-use
Plastic bags. Once they are unwrapped, keep
Them safe for when the next one comes along.
That’s the beauty of poems written by other people.
They adapt quickly to the season of your heart.
Bhawna Jaimini is an architect, writer, and activist-in-making. You can follow her here.