You are a Poet

You wonder who you are,
budding through the kith and kin
of Rumi’s words and blossom
into what comes next.
You sneak into Kafka’s letters
and find yourself
in Milena’s lap.
You sleep in the canopy
of Plath’s legacy
and wake up to immortalize her death.
You are the twin literature lost
in an overcrowded fair.

You are the chuckles at a funeral
and a thousand Earths in Jupiter.
You add a difference to the world
just like the moon does
to a bowl of stars.
Your collarbones are
the sea coasts waiting
to be kissed by water waves
never to be the same again.
You dyed your hair blue yesterday
with tints of key lime green
to experience aurora borealis
on your hairline.

Your lover’s memory has rotten
like a mango on you.
Now there are bees drinking
from the pools of tears in your eyes.
Had it not been for the better,
you would never let go of him.
Life does not fail to make you believe
that life is temporary.
When it turns too warm,
it ends up burning you to the bone.
When you’re numb,
it doubles the chills
running over your nerves.

You are not the insecurities
you pick up like
your mother picks chaff from grains
to cook another meal,
to write another poem.
You are not the rumors
that spread like pollen everywhere.
You are the truth-
the flower with no fragrance
but always alive,
never evanescing,
waiting to be found like a 5-rupee coin
in a child’s pocket
waiting to become
a fascinating discovery.

-YOU ARE A POET

-Khatija Khan

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About the Poet-

Khatija, from a small town in MP, India, is a writer and dreamer. Though quiet in person, she becomes a chatterbox in her poems. Her work has been selected and published in anthologies by The Write Order, Indie Press, and Poems India. She has also won poetry contests such as NaPoWriMo’22 by Brown Hour Poetry and NaPoWriMo’24 by Kala Laya. For Khatija, heaven consists of books, evenings, and ice cream.