By SHREYA HEDGE
Why do I like my poetry?
It helps me dress the way the earth bounces off me.
I can see people’s desires hiding underneath trees, and I can watch the liquid confidence rushing in my arms. I can hide and tuck my emotions in the undersides of a wave. The ground sparkles, and my insides sparkle alongside because of poetry.
It tells me that the leaves have fallen, that the trees want to show their fingers. But the white snow covers these fingers like white gloves. My poetry shows me that some trees huddle together to gossip about this.
In my class, I see some words leave my professor’s mouth and hop to his iPad and jump to my book. The words, I realize, are carefully immigrating; I don’t know if it’s against their will. I hope they got a chance to pack their bags, turn the stove off, and hug their families.
My poetry changes the world around me. The sun shines on my eyelashes and drops down to my eyes as liquid gold. And with my poetry by my side, I want to soak in my skin. The sky looked at me with all of its clouds. I was so happy, I raised my emotions to the trees and let their leaves fly away with the wind. I hope my happiness germinated somewhere.
In the bus, my poetry shows me that the words rolling out of people’s mouths swing like the handles they hold for support. Their existence slides down their firm, unyielding trousers and curves down through their pointy shoes. Their experience and their words become friends along this downward journey.
Near my dorm, a man ran across the parking lot. The cars were strange onlookers. He stopped. His thoughts moved away from him. They gathered together and danced at their own will, stepping and tackling the snow in front of him, and all he could do was watch himself watch his thoughts. I take a breath in all of its entirety.
My feelings became cushiony and wrapped as my friends danced with their hearts hugging them — warm and true. I hung onto those movements and converted those moments into monsoon. They rained on me, splash splash drip.
I like poetry because it overwhelmingly converges to a creative point. Something internally rings. Something externally strings. My eyes roll about my poetry because the world is spinning.
My poetry helps me see smells, piggyback on the sounds of clock chimes. It takes people’s sounds and tightly stretches them against my ears. The words in my poetry flush down the slopes of the petals of a rose I am holding and slosh around in its tornado. They spill over like the sky is spilling over like a pulp.
Poetry has consumed me. It is everywhere. Like I’m stuck in the long neck of a giraffe, the chitter chatter of a woodpecker’s beak, the sky blueness of the sky, the wings and butter of a butterfly, the swoop of an eagle. I can’t help but swim and fly in this expanse of a new world I have created. My reality is shifting, and I control the oars of this voyage.
People can think this makes no sense. At least I’m giving sense to the senseless, voice to the voiceless. I’m shining light on the shadows of our world.
Writer | Shreya Hegde ’26 | shegde26@amherst.edu
Editor | Rania Adouim ’26 | radouim26@amherst.edu