Loneliness seems to be my default. I’m addicted to bottling up my emotions and not opening up about my feelings because it means I can write poetry about it after.
Pairing this realisation with Ha Jin’s poem ‘Missed Time’, in which he writes that ‘nothing is better than to live a storyless life that needs no writing for meaning’, I came up with the poem below. I’d hate to live a storyless life and it seems I seek out harmful situations in the hopes I won’t have to. It would explain my pragmatism whenever things go array; I have coping mechanisms and solutions for nearly every problem I encounter.
It’s painful to admit, but there’s this awful, awful relief that comes with drowning. The emotions you get to re-experience, the places your mind revisits. For me, it’s the reassurance that I’m capable of writing deeply emotional poetry.
Imagine waking up not grieving
for what could have been
Not carrying the disappointment of others
so heavily bruises appear on your skin
Owning diaries in which
entries are barely half a page
because there is no heartache to lament
no melancholy to disengage
To be happy is to be storyless
the last thing I want to be
I want to be a book you can’t put down
live a life as unpredictable as the sea
Remember, you can read more poems on my Instagram!
- Karisma
xxx
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