The poet in me is dying a slow death
Painless but suffocating,
Just like a butterfly
That just learnt how to fly
But got gulped down before even realising
That it’s stuck in a deadly spider web.
The poet in me is greedy.
She craves praise
And when her ears aren’t full to brim
She starts questioning her abilities,
And nothing is more painful
Than a poet asking
If she is a poet enough.
The poet in me gets so easily depressed
When her post on social media
Doesn’t get enough likes,
When the algorithm doesn’t kick in right,
And she tries to fix these useless issues
Instead of learning how to write
A haiku better.
It scares me how I’m becoming
More of an Instagrammer than a poet.
The poet in me cares more about
Quantity than quality
And works like a broken record,
Repeating same useless efforts
To fulfil my emotional needs.
But was it really meant to be like this?
Since when did the poet in me
Start paying attention to everything but poetry?
Since when did she start searching
“How to get famous?”
Instead of “How to write sonnets”?
The poet in me is sick from greed
And no medicine can cure it,
Because I can already see her
Laying down on the floor
C-O-L-O-U-R-L-E-S-S
Strangled
Lifeless.
The poet in me
Is dead.
No, I killed her.
Moumita Bhattacharjee is an 18-year-old budding writer from Kolkata.
Featured image: Christoph Keil / Unsplash