Notes From A Soft Poet

A collage

I shouldn’t be sitting here receiving blank letters from you. I shouldn’t be chasing the same tornadoes again and again.

But world needs blood and I am a soft poet trying to save whatever I can even if it takes repetitive empty songs and desire less keys.

I am a stoic. I am a free willed star. And yet tonight is very weak. It is asking me to surrender to a world that doesn’t know any other way to keep its birds alive. Isn’t everything self-contradictory?

Is surrender weak even if it is for survival?

Isn’t there bravery in trying to keep finding a breath even if dreamless?

Is a poet only always soft? A miserable hopeful body always burdened by love?

Can the world change? Does it need to?

Do the birds really stay alive?

~

Vaishali Paliwal