Dreamy Poet

Poetry by Kavya Janani. U
How The Inside of My Mouth Felt After I Told Him I Loved Him – Prose Poem

How The Inside of My Mouth Felt After I Told Him I Loved Him – Prose Poem

“I wrote this for you. I wrote the book for you.”

There. These two sentences would have been easily said by a character in a movie, but did you know how the inside of my mouth felt after I told him this? I had to undergo penance, invoking goddess Athena, to let courage flow inside my palate. I cracked my gums open to let the syllables trickle out.

My tongue felt like a centuries-old dried-up well. I had to rinse my mouth with metaphors taken from Minerva’s veins to wet it. Yet, I could taste the what-ifs and question marks that hung from the tiny spaces between my teeth. What if I had got it all wrong? What if his heart had always dipped into platonic chartreuse whenever he looked at me, instead of the passionate crimson I hoped for?

He laughed and told me that it felt good to be a muse for a poet. Is that what my verses meant to him? That he was just a muse and not the one who broke in through my glassed heart? What about all the unwritten poems that stayed in my frenula, ready to spill out if he replied, “I love you. I have always loved you.” I gasped and found that my parched mouth could still swallow.

That night, my mouth felt heavy with the confession but heavier with his indifference.

©Kavya Janani. U


If you love my poems, please consider purchasing a copy of my poetry collection – La Douleur Exquise.

You can read my other prose poems here: Prose Poetry by Kavya Janani. U


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Dreamy Poet