First Person Account of a Seed by Vinita Agrawal

First Person Account of a Seed by Vinita Agrawal All night, the face of awning greenhovers above me, its branches carved partlywith the grimace of my own imagination.The sacred wounds of treesleaves me trembling in my own hands.This is the first lesson, though it comesfrom no sage, no guide, but myself:that if I must shatter, let it be outward,like a burst of light, leaves, flowers, fruits—not this inward scoping and scraping of darkness.In the afternoon, a Laburnum, goldenand thick as a second sun, spills over myshoulders while I am bent over in contemplation,oblivious to the miracle of the universearriving blindingly through the window.The yellow blooms are the second lesson,both an elegy and an anthem, my true trophy.I must remember them—for memory is the only permanenceon the tarmac of sprouting.Germinating is not a cage, I don’t squirmor shrink to break open my coat, nor my vestof testa and tegmen. To pullulate,is to swim through an ocean of moist soil,air, sunlight. Then, thrust out a radicle.The annunciation of flowers, until coloursjostle with colours, is speech, if onlyit could be understood. I dream of a thousandforests in my frantic hunger to wrestle withas many shadows as there are beams of light.To exist without a map, is the third lesson—to speak and not be heard, to have my ribsache with greed for verdancy, to lose friendsto the whirl of winds, to vanish for no reason,to stay unbroken, even in the breaking. More from Vinita ↓@vinitaagrawal18 on InstagramHer book Eartha is out nowMentioned in this episode:Write After with One Poem OnlyWrite After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice. If you want to join: Listen to a poem from the month of April on One Poem Only, then write your own in response. I will pick one for each day to read in June for a special series: One Poem After 🍎🍏 Submissions close May 15.Write After Submissions Form