catastrophe

i’m working on a book. i wake mid-sleep to write down phrases. i write for ten
hours  at a time and i feel alone but i’ve never felt so fulfilled. my friend asks ‘are
they all about you? everything you write is it about you?’. we laugh. i don’t know
what we’re laughing at. what is the imagination for? i’ve told boys in the past that
i’m no good at lying, i was lying. i also use to say ‘i don’t like the taste of coffee’
now i lick the foam from the plastic lids, an odd hunger. look how we change. i
said i’d use this place to document joy, but it has become a home for half
poems.  i turned twenty four, 30 days ago. ya rahman. ease has settled on me,
comfort in every person and in every thing. london has been warm. nights by the
river laughing. drinking mint tea, backs of thighs sticking to benches. reading
poems by dead people out loud and mourning a little. berries changing the colour
of lips and tongue. baby selma learning how to clap. i know loved ones sometimes
worry, as you do when people live inside their heads too much, i say ‘i’m happy’,
they’re cautious. anais nin said it best, ‘the secret to joy is the mastery of pain’.

—warsan shire