THE SADNESS OF CLOTHES.

II.

I am not a poet as long as my words are still clutching at air. I am not a poet if I weave my sentences out of self-made vacuums and empty spaces. I am not a poet until I learn to write about the wingspan of a crow, the sweet rush of a metro evening, the scurrying of a squirrel in summer. I am not a poet until I tell you about the way dragon fruits look like multiple hands joined in a sweet prayer. By sweet prayer, I mean the monotony that hangs around hospital receptions, and the mercy we have on diaries filled up before the year ends. 

I am not a poet until I find a way to write about the sweltering happiness of an April morning that is being swallowed by a blue sky wavering in its intent, about the hum that settles in my chest when I watch peepal trees hold up a grey landscape. I am not a poet until I listen to the leaves bargain with wind and sun alike, pushing and pulling until a breeze is born out of stagnant air. I am not a poet until I tell you about the way vines never hesitate before swallowing poles and drowning concrete walls in their greens and yellows, and also about the ravenous appetites of foliage, how they lurk stealthily in cities, unafraid of the desire their bodies hold - how they are always reaching out. 

I am not a poet until I can translate the slosh of the mountain streams and the life they carry. I am not a poet until I can make up a myth to explain why clouds only come down to rest on the roundest, most isolated hill peaks. And I confess I don't know what the pops of yellow-green clinging to hills are, only that I wish for them to cling to my body as well.