I had a scream inside me I needed to let out. More, I needed to be witnessed screaming. So I signed up to perform the next evening. I decided to perform a piece called ‘Litany of Rage’. It was a compilation of several smaller poems and fragments I wrote since I went underwater last year.
Last week I had met someone whose heart and music spoke to mine. So I asked them to accompany my piece with their music. We got together to practice. I read that piece aloud after months.
When I used to read it earlier, it evoked rage. A lot of rage - global, personal, mythic. There was a burning quality to it. Loud, muffled, metallic : a deep thrumming of the earth, an echo trapped underneath the sea, a threatening call to shai-hulud. Resounding.
But it was none of that now. I got this clarity half-way through reading it. It wasn’t evoking what it used to. More, I was no longer the person who wrote it.
As if, almost imperceptibly, all that metal melted into seasalt. All screams turned to tears. The seas have risen indeed. I couldn’t meet rage in my reading of it. It was no longer a litany of rage. It was now all grief. Life was asking me once again to lose. And sure, it is not a bad thing but it most certainly is difficult.
Is this the measure of change?
I keep chiding myself for not sharing here more often - I’m often too harsh with myself. I had thought I will post that piece here after my performance. But I didn’t anticipate having to meet with this change. How to share something I am only just meeting myself?
Who I am today can not just copy, paste and post a testament to that past. I am struggling not because it is difficult to accept who I was then but because it is difficult to accept that I am no longer who I was when I wrote it all. So it is slow. And painful. And also the only way, I guess?
Any way, the event got cancelled so I did not have to perform. And that was the best thing to happen because it wouldn’t have felt true. Life was watching over me. I can trust it to.
Meanwhile, here are two fragments that do feel true to share.
(1)
Hold my hand then leave.
My palms will leave no prints.
Look, the lines on it - so young
and all crossed out.
Hold my hand again then leave.
Go, cloud-bearer, leave
for lands clean and familiar, leave
behind no footprints, only rain.
~
(2)
I see you walking towards me,
mouth half-open
and filled
with words yet to live.
I see you walking away,
gait half-steady
but sure
of truths not yet revealed.
Turn me inside out.
Rip me.
This violence within
was not always here
~
Go, hug someone, dear one.
PS : The ‘Altar’ in my heading represents this category for posts that will contain poetry I am ready to let go of… release into the world to be tasted and chewed.
Love,
Devanshi
Thank you for sharing yourself so openly & vulnerably Devanshi, can feel the tenderness you're cultivating with yourself. I've come to realise that the holding hands & leaving is part of a great big clapping hands game that we're all playing in, albeit painful there is much to learn from it; loved that fragment btw 🧡
💛