And then I said I don't like fantasy.
It feels like comfort, but no—
It's not true, it can never be...

So realism is where I live,
the bitter truth like black coffee,
over the candy of imagination.
Maybe I don't hate sweets; I'm just too scared.
Too scared that it results in an aversion to the reality I exist in.

I refuse to get used to comfort because it never quite stays.
I'm too used to reality to dwell in my imagination.
Too devastated, the logic in me kills the poetry sometimes.
And too afraid I might get lost in my mind.

So I write when my logic gives up,
when I'm too caught up in the web of emotions to think practically,
when I'm too overwhelmed, too wrecked.

Intensity—it's a drug.
The drug from which I seek the high,
the high which overwhelms me to write,
the poetry which stays in the future,
the future which is uncertain but certain at the same time, since it's built by the present,
the present where I'm seeking the intensity.

Tell me, where should I seek my drug?
In the joy of success,
in the wreck of failure,
in the intoxication of love,
or... in the vileness of hate?

But I can't escape to my highs
because I'm too occupied,
too occupied to feel,
too numb to write.
To write a poem is to rhyme words.
Yet here I am, a mind empty of words that rhyme,
because here I am, a mind too full of pressure and logic.

—Aditi Hayaran (Larkspur)