Therefore, she died like that, without even a single verse.
Once upon a time, there was a very old woman who lived all her life with a heavy stone upon her heart. It was the weight of poetry and she never succeeded in getting rid of it. Fact is you can never get rid of poetry. It lives inside your body and it grows like a cancer. It feasts with your soul, it breathes in your lungs, beats in your heart and then finally drowns in your mouth. That is what happens when you don't let it out. It should flow through your veins alongside your blood and then come out of your hands in a sea of black ink, just like the blood from a well-placed cut.
She never was able to make that sacrifice so she lived while unspoken stanzas were consuming her. She lived like that until her final breath. When it came out the air seemed coloured with a strange shade of blue. Was that the colour of poetry or just the colour of death?
She once was just a little girl. She was not happy, she was not full of hopes, she was just full of poetry but even then, she could not get it out. Is there still a place in this world for someone who just wants to live in a poem? Did it ever exist? The little girl was not so sure of that so she just went on living as if that was not a part of her. In fact, it was not, poetry was her whole life.
She was not good at anything else and she wasn't even good at poetry, she never even wrote a single verse, she wasn't able.
She made it all up in her head, but then, just a moment later it disappeared, lost in the oblivion of memories. Words sank in a hole that was so deep and so dark and it looked like her soul. She used to think she was not good enough but that was not an excuse for poetry. Poetry demanded all her life, it craved her feelings. Even now, she remembered hearing a tiny little voice inside her head whispering things that she could not put into words. She wondered: "What kind of poet you are if you cannot even put your thoughts into words?" However, poetry never cared if one was good or not. It did not desired talent, that was a thing for human beings; it wanted all of your love, your deepest fears, a violent rage. When you write down your soul you are selling it to the muse of poetry, which is not so different from selling it to the devil itself, or better, you are offering it since you won't get anything in return. But this the young girl did not know and neither did the old woman and they never will. Is there a place in hell for people like her? People who refuse to obey their muse, people who disappoint their own soul. Or maybe hell is already the life they are living since a life without fulfilment is no life at all. The young girl never believed in anything at all. The old woman deeply believed in the fear of the nothingness that was coming for her. All her life she had been afraid of the void hiding in the corner of her room calling her name, wanting to reach her. It is actually something that is there for all us, it is black, that kind of darkness without escape. It is like closing your eyes in a room, which is already completely surrounded in darkness. It is that sort of obscurity that cannot be beaten in anyway. One feels so alone that he starts making up things to see even if they are not there and they will never be.
That is exactly what happens when we die or so the young girl thought.
She used to read, when she was at least able to appreciate those great creatures who succeeded in what she never could, that poetry was the only thing that could make life eternal. Poetry never dies and if you are part of it you can live with it, the same way she lived with you all your life. It gives you back the favour, it is merciful sometimes. But the young girl never saw that side of it, so now the old woman was doomed to the nothingness of death, forever.
One, lonely tear fell from her left eye, maybe all that was left of her poetry was still there and was finally coming out, maybe that was her last thought. There were many times in which she tried to take it out like that. She cried and cried, there were so many papers wet with her tears and those tears were full of her poetry but still, those papers were blank and unsullied. Those tears could not possibly write any kind of word for they were not made of ink, they were just water.
The young girl was a weak little thing.
The old woman was an empty shell.
She used to think about the ways people tried to let go of poetry in their lives. People like her who could not live as they wanted to, people who could not live at all.
Some used to say that there was poetry everywhere and maybe that was because someone put it where it should not have been. Some people even saw poetry in death. That maybe was because when you die poetry finally leaves your body and goes haunting some other poor soul. Therefore, they could put all of their poetry in that final act before letting it go once and for all.
That is how a suicide works. Or that was the young girl's idea, but she was just a little fool. She used to think about suicide a lot, about how beautiful her final moment could have been. But she never was able to do it, even like that, letting her soul out seemed impossible, too hard. She never even tried.
And what about those terrible murderers? Serial killers? Some of them used to say that their actions followed some sort of sense of art. She once met a creepy stranger in a very old library, their eyes crossed and she knew he wanted to kill her; he looked at her as a wolf looks at his prey. She never saw him again but for that second she felt she was able to read his mind and he wanted to make her his piece of art. So these murderers, what if they were trying to pull something out, their poetry for example, just like she never did?
Did that mean there was something evil in poetry? Something evil in her? Was poetry an enemy?
It was nothing like that; poetry was neither an enemy nor a friend. It consumed you whole and there were simply many ways in which you could let it consume you.
She considered all the strangest ways to save herself from that sweet, excruciating curse. She even liked the sight of blood. Red was always better than black. But she could not, she was not able to make that kind of sacrifice. What else there was in life that poetry craved?
She hated, she hated with her whole body and soul. She hated with that kind of rage that makes less an animal and more a human being. She hated the blood that was running through her veins because it was filthy. It was evil because it came from something evil. She craved that blood, she wanted to spill it. But hate wasn't enough.
Hate was a fire that burnt in a second and left you with nothing but a pile of ashes. She stood there looking at those ashes and felt nothing.
Then it came love, she loved to her surprise, she loved as if it was the only thing that mattered, but it was not. She loved as if that love could have saved her, as if that love could have beaten the cravings of poetry, but it never could.
She thought that loving was the safest way to express her poetry, but it was not for poetry is never about others, it is only about itself. It is a selfish and mischievous creature. Poetry lives in a kingdom of solitude.
She sat in an empty room all by herself and thought about the things she could have said or wrote but she never did. She did not speak words of love or hate or death and neither did she write them. She just kept them inside and those words ate her alive.
And what happens if said poetry starts rotting inside of you? Do you start rotting too? Maybe it was so for the young girl who could not write. Sometimes she was so mean that people could not even tell she was the same person they knew. Poetry was indeed poisoning her soul, poison through her veins, poison in her mouth. She could not control that poison from coming out the wrong way. Frustration came in like a wave of madness, so much she sometimes even believed she was going crazy, for real. But so many wrote their best in a state of utter madness, why couldn't she? She couldn't kill anyone with her pen; she could just torture herself and never create art out of that torture.