By Neetu Ralhan
Virginia
Last night, I watched Virginia agonize
over writing and not writing,
over feeling empty [having given her all
to a manuscript],
over not knowing what to write next,
over watching herself succumb to love
and then having to live through betrayal.
I watched, intently, her perennially welled-up eyes,
as if in anticipation of the next tragedy.
I watched her speak of death
as if one was the artist and the other muse,
though I cannot say which was which.
I meditated over the words that left her mouth
and those that didn’t.
As she stood on the river’s
edge, contemplating its depth,
I stood by her side and wondered
what it would be like to simply disappear.
I listened, mesmerised, as she
disrobed a love so beautiful and utterly complete
just so the truth underneath could come up for air.
I marvelled at her effortlessness with words
and the effort it took her to speak them.
And as she disappeared —
yet again — into the solitary
depths of her mind,
I wondered what it would be like
to have a room of one’s own.
Neetu Ralhan is a writer and editor based in Gurgaon, India. Her poems have been published in The Mind Creative by Avijit Sarkar and eFiction India. She writes poetry at https://sllipofthepen.wordpress.com/
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