//lightness//

A poem from the archives

The word ‘languor’ means ‘an oppressive stillness of the air’.

Poetic, isn’t it?

I’ve never felt languor. (Blatant denial)

In an exam hall,

In a house devoid of people,

In unwanted/ unheeded relationships,

In fights with someone I love,

And after,

I’ve felt palpable tension,

A creeping panic, whispering that things will never be the same again,

A knot in my chest.

Am I so dramatic as to be calling that ‘languor’?

For a major part of my life,

I have been focusing on not letting that feeling (it shall remain unnamed) destroy me,

Consume my very soul.

When I stepped out one day, there was a newness,

Like I’d never really known how to breathe and I had to learn it all over again,

Like a rigidity had been replaced with fluid movement and *poof*.

It had been a symbol, this knot,

With its allegiance to languor (delayed acceptance?)

A shrine for all the anguish I’d felt over the years,

Collected, maintained, in a chasm,

And now that it’s gone,

I don’t know how to make peace with this indelible lightness within.

-DP