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To be happy is to be storyless - Original Poem

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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