Creativity

The Aftermath of April

Vashti Kalvi

June 9, 2021

I don’t know how much better off I am for it, but my brain changed shape this April. I didn’t think that writing a poem a day for a month would entail so much rigour. It tore me apart and put me back together. Transformation is a selling point of most boot-camp crash-course based programs, and even if I had taken that to heart, it wouldn’t have prepared me for what I was left with at the end.

April was reconnecting with the creative writing craft that I had put in a dusty box, only to be disturbed a handful of times over as many years. It was letting go of the loosely constructed professional image I’d grown strangely attached to. It was a month-long exercise in discipline, vulnerability, and self-respect, and a brutal reminder that even the most transformative practice is limited by how sustainable it is.

I shared a reflection on my social media accounts which was pretty and largely positive, mostly to manipulate my gradient grid, another aspect of my professional self that I’ve grown oddly attached to. This is a more thorough reflection- a little more depth and a lot more vulnerability.

The Aftermath of April
I spent the better part of May
fixing my sleeping patterns,
and I ordered myself a set of pens,
with ten different colours, two metallic.

A day into the exercise
I realised I’d been living on
the remnants of old generosity

from my baby brother’s welcome present
when I came back from a year of college,
he was new with scabs I didn’t recognize
but same with his warmth and giving-

from the high school friend
whose homework I sometimes did.
I thought one day we’d fall in love,
and the pens he said I chewed up
would acquire new meaning-

from my father walking, store to store
in the October heat of Vellore,
to find the pens I wanted
because my baby brother’s gift
from years ago had taught me that
glitter gel ink makes me loathe
my words a little less.

See, I want to say I tore myself open
to do this for you.
but it was really for me, to see if I had it in me,
to find the old incision line,
and precisely tear it open,
to risk creating a new tear
more jagged and raw,
to see if there was anything worth spilling.

In the aftermath of April,
for the first time ever,
I bought myself a set of pens,
with ten different colours, two metallic.