The Absence of a Poem
I wish I knew a way to tell you how it feels to see a new story fade away everytime I blink. A guilt rests heavily upon my fingers. The lost tales disable me from documenting an emotion ....
Recently, we shared a thought-provoking poem on our Instagram that touched upon the challenges many of us face as writers. It explored the hardship of those fleeting moments when stories and poems materialize before our eyes, only to vanish as we struggle to capture them on paper. It's akin to a balloon soaring high in the sky, lost to us if we dare to divert our gaze even for a moment.
This piece resonated with many individuals as it encapsulates a universal experience: the creative process. We all encounter those periods when the words elude us, when there seems to be nothing left to write about, or when the subjects before us appear as elusive as a wisp of smoke in the wind, slipping through our fingers and leaving us grasping at the air.
To be a poet or a writer is to perceive the world in infinite light and to explore myriad perspectives and aspects of existence. Yet, it can be challenging, for we may sometimes overlook the simplicity of truth in our pursuit of the grander, the unseen, or the undiscovered. Sometimes, the solution lies in surrendering to the creative blocks and listening to what they have to say. Occasionally, we need to revert to the approach of the amateur version of our poet, writing without the critical eye of an editor, without filters, and without seeking external validation.
Denial rarely leads to positive outcomes. With this in mind, we are leaving you with two captivating poems, including the one that we featured yesterday on our Instagram. Let these verses serve as a solace. May they be a whispered reminder that you are not alone.
How a writer writes by Kumari Savita
A writer never runs out of stories. They run out of ways to tell those.
I wish I knew a way to tell you how it feels to see a new story fade away every time I blink. A guilt rests heavily upon my fingers. The lost tales disable me from documenting an emotion, a sensation and an instinct.
I wait for the rains. The first smell of it makes me jump out of my bed and reach out for something to write on and something to write with. I always have something to write about. I want to write it all but I can only write a few.
It rains. An anxiety seeps through me making it difficult to choose my story. Should I write about the moment I realized there was gonna be just one toothbrush in my bathroom the next day onwards when my sister moved out or should I write about the sorrows of the dog that sits outside my accommodation, waiting to be disappointed again as I walk past it without patting. The dilemma grows.
The rain stops. I haven’t yet found anything to write on and anything to write with. But I continue my search. I find a receipt, I turn it over and write upon it with my kajal pencil. I found a way. It’s a strange way but before you know it, you’ll be writing all your stories everywhere- paper, wall, laptop- everywhere!
“I will never stop” I lie to myself.
An inevitability of self-doubt and paralyzing fear of rejections awaits to disorient my way until I run out of ways to tell my stories again.
The Absence of a Poem by Resham Sharma
The absence of a poem sticks in the underbelly of your fingers- fingers who don’t recognise each other without the veils of ink, fingers who are nameless outside the pretence of art; the absence of a poem is the absence of a religion, you haven’t forgotten how to mouth a prayer, only you don’t remember whom the mouth belongs to now.
White seas of paper gasp for breath under your hands, but your thumbs waver on the shore as if they don’t recall the feeling of being wet, as if the waters are too sacred for their sins to drown; how do you write the absence of a poem? How do you make the waves sit down at the crown of your feet and die between the toes of your silence? How do you leave a page emptier than it used to be?
A poet is the flesh that stretches from the back of your neck down to your heel, he only exists as long as he is touched- he lives within the span of an itch to a scratch, and that itch is poetry. The absence of a poem, hence, is the skin between your forehead and toes, longing to be desired with the sin of touch. The absence of a poem is barely human.
A body stands buried beneath the ground, made to count days after death by mapping hours of the fragrance of fresh flowers on its grave turning rancid at the door of the moon- not for a moment being able to hold them in its hands or father their stems; the absence of a poem is to live days like a chain of short-lived deaths, not being able to translate your grief into mourning. But there are no funerals for people who go missing and aren’t found, they are replaced with a faceless hope as alive as it is dead. The absence of a poem is the poet gone missing.
Find me before I become the absence of a poem.
Also, we have been searching for a name that truly captures the essence of this newsletter, and in “Mosaic”, we have found one. From this moment forward, our newsletter shall be known as "Mosaic." It represents the vibrant array of poetic expressions we aim to bring to your inbox.