How stuck can you feel in a world which in itself is stuck in a never-ending loop? How close or far do you deem your own being in such a world? Didn’t it seem as if someone had put together days, weeks, and months into a compression machine and out there was 2020 – a year that might as well have been a month or even a week – for who’s watching and who’s even keeping track?
A lazy glance at the calendar might take you to April 2021, ‘but wasn’t March 2020 just last week?’, you might ponder!
A year from now – what was, isn’t anymore. No, in April 2020, you couldn’t ask them out for a drink. So, you picked up the phone and made the call that started with the daily musings of being stuck inside and only ended with you watching the sunrise together. In April 2021, a month so similar to April 2020 that they could virtually be clones, you cannot ask them for a drink either. Well, politically speaking, you could, but with all those months in the middle, you don’t just pick up the phone anymore!
You think you are smarter, wiser. ‘This time, I know what to do if they lock me in,’ you believe.
‘Sharper between my ears,
My wisdom is wise beyond my years,’ thinks poet Arjun Chopra as he indulges in a reserved yet cathartic tête-à-tête with the new April here. Playing along with multifarious concepts of self-perception, identity, and introspection, an April that might necessarily be the wisest month despite its reputation turns into Arjun’s muse, his friend (or probably an acquaintance, maybe even a potential lover!) and the audience to his performance of catharsis.
Read as Arjun calls upon ‘Dear April’ and pours his heart out on the sixth day of the National Poetry Writing Month.
Dear April,
It’s been a year & things have hardly changed.
I’m here, you’re there, and the distance between us is everywhere.
It’s been a year & it’s definitely too late to send this.
But get this, I’m on the flip flop with my top just about to pop.
My heart wasn’t in it back then, in half-a-mind acting like half-a-friend.
Now that I’m sharper between my ears,
My wisdom is wise beyond my years.
I’ll unload my dirty laundry here, just for you to see & you to hear.
You’re the audience to my performance of catharsis. Please excuse my creative liberties,
I’m an artist.
I’m a farce, it’s
Here for all to see & all to hear.
Acting out the last act of Shakespeare’s King Lear.
When we were together, I played the fool.
I jested, I touched stone, I acted cruel.
My infinite wisdom compels me to apologise.
The magnitude of my remorse, I cannot overemphasise
Enough. The thought of you reading this,
Turns the tips of my ears pink.
I hope you take this well,
Let me know if you wanna grab a drink.
Arjun Chopra is a Mumbai-based digital marketer, who studied in Raigad, Maharashtra. He writes poetry in an attempt to bottle life and its various instances from his perspective. If you were to read his mind 10 minutes before he was going to start writing, you would find this running on a loop.
Find Arjun’s poetry on Instagram here.
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