I know ‘right before the exams’ is a crazy time for me

Sometimes beautiful and sometimes incredibly difficult

Sometimes all about poetry that flows through my blood in those days

Sometimes the hollowness of my room, sometimes of my thoughts

Sometimes the emptiness in my heart, and sometimes how full I feel

because I took more time than usual in finishing a meal

that would otherwise be over in less than 10 minutes; the slowness comes

in the avoidance of books that I love but hate because I have to glance

through them fast and I can’t taste them slowly and swallow them with

joy; the way I enjoyed my food today.

So I glance at them and look away, at the choices I have made

Of distant poets and story tellers and lovers of words whom I love

and I stare at their lives so deeply with tears in my eyes wondering

if they ever feel the way I feel sometimes; and if I will ever feel the way

they do; and if ever somebody else will wish to feel the way I feel

today

And whether the hunger in my soul and the thirst in my heart

will ever be quenched by my fulfilling the promises I keep making to

myself every now and then.

The book continues to stare at me and I continue to smile at the computer screen

telling myself that there are more important things

and that this time here, my laptop and the candle right next to it,

and the fire it holds, is much more important than learning I will forget

the day my exam gets over; though I hope I don’t.