Calling myself a poet
I was on the edge of six when I wrote my first poem. It was nothing more than just a series of rhyming words scattered around the ends of some verses that hardly made any sense. But I proudly read it to my ailing grandfather, who smiles and says, "You are such a good poet,love".
But I did not call myself I poet back then.
My ninth grade teacher asks, why do I write and read about Van Gogh's paintings all the time. Upon which I say, how I find it so captivating that a living being, who never touched, sensed, felt or seen death can create such a masterpiece, all based on his power of imagination. How extraordinary life is, that artists die yet remain alive through their art; maybe for sometimes being alive is more than having a heartbeat.
But I did not call myself a poet back then.
Summer of 2010, I remember walking alongside the sea shore, hand in hand with my lover. At one point he looks at me and as the sunset floods my iris, he smiles saying how my eyes look like pools of honey; while I stood smiling back, wishing to say how his blue eyes holds all the secrets that the ocean seeks for and how they light up, as if the universe itself engraved them with the brightest mix of stardust.
But I did not call myself a poet back then.
On the edge of eighteen, the world of Plath's poetry welcomed me. I realised that words could hold more than feelings and passion. They can walk on the road of regrets, yet sound like a love song that two happy silhouettes dance, on the moon's good side.
I called myself a poet the day I started weaving my fears with threads of gold and silver, turning haunted houses into dreamlike wonderlands. For I was a poet painting constellations upon my worst nightmares.
For poetry was a lie that only a poet could tell.
- Bidisha P. Kashyap
