Though I am looking at the pain from distance, pain in the north east, pain in the west, pain in the north of my country, the pain climbs up on my body, I feel pain in my body, my shoulders, my mind, and in my emotions. I do not know which pain is personal and which pain belongs to my country.

Do the words we use belong to ourselves or do we simply borrow from others? I am still in pain… I wonder if I want to be closer to words along with their emotions, did pain teach me all this? Maybe, who knows!

Poetry is pain, they say. I am not sure about it, as I was to keep myself just a void, without any emotions, in this cruel time.

While working on this issue of poetry, I am not sure if this is the time when we must believe in the words or not?

But I know, poetry can carry the pain.

Long live pain! And so poetry!!

Rati Saxena