I write with the fear of losing all that I have ever written. Retarded Rhymes from the time I was 12. In minuscule, neat alphabets, with pencil on paper yellowed with age. an old note pad that belonged to my grandfather.


Words rhymed, the poems were small, painfully simple lines. Innocence perhaps, more complex feelings had not yet assaulted my words then. Love still rhymed with dove, blue with you, sky with why.

I wrote of love- without ever being in it. Wrote about imagined pains. Drama as always. No colours, no visions, no time lapses and no morbidity. How difficult can black graphite on paper get?

There is no going back to that oblivious innocence. I have lost those poems. Words, oft used, ever abused- rhymes, without knowing about passions, about desires, about sins.

My mother wanted to keep those poems- but I lost them. Maybe because I was growing up. This grownup life had no space for such simplicities. If I knew that growing up was such a scary process- I would have kept those poems forever.