On Poetry and a Whole Set of Quite Unfamiliar Words

“Don’t waste your words again on writing sad poetry,” he said.

At the back of my mind, I was actually screaming, “But I thrive in doing so!”

For how can you suddenly deal with a different set of words suddenly offered to you---like being offered a whole new set of vocabularies, when words such as angst, and cynicism, and senseless waiting, and unrequited emotions fit your literary Muse and your pen quite perfectly, like a pair of old, faded jeans?

“Your words are heartbreakingly beautiful but it’s about time you stop writing sad poetry.” Those words echoed through me again.

And I was struck.

I could have told him that I could no longer stop doing so, that there’s actually no need for me to stop writing poems loaded with angst and cynicism. For at this point, I couldn’t even write a sad poem, not even if I try---for all the words that my pen had been faithfully bleeding over the years are actually slowly being replaced by words such as tenderness, and constancy, and quite surprisingly, love.