“I am a dog shivering outside some mansion’s doors where a party is raging outside. I smell the food, hear the revelling, but I want no part of it. In fact, what I want is the warmth that is surely to be found inside, in some corner, some nook or cranny between the walls, which can really be found in any house, but still I’m sitting outside a mansion. I crave the elegant and the eloquent when really any place will do, but I not only want to belong but belong there within regality, within the finest of places. I know I won’t dine, or maybe take a bite, but I’m sitting outside the door wondering, and that is all I do.”

Sarita sat staring at her screen after having just written the prose poem with a finger on her chin and the other hand scratching the back of her neck. What did it mean? She didn’t know. What she did know was that it felt good to write it out, even though what it was, she had no idea about.

Sarita thought back to the conversation she had had earlier in the day, with her friend Babin, to whom she’d said, bemoaning even, how she hadn’t written a sensible word, or even a phrase, for the past year or so. Babin had listened intently, nodded appropriately, and sipped his coffee in a knowing manner, and after she’d said all that she’d wanted to say, he put his mug down between them and said, with the kindest of tones, “Sarita, if you didn’t talk about it as much as you do, I’d have completely forgotten you were a ‘writer’.”

There followed a heavy pause.

“What do you mean?” she said finally.

“Well, I’ve known you for two years now, and aside from a poem here and there you’ve posted on social media, you’ve not written much.” He took a sip from his coffee and set it down again and said: “As I mentioned, if you didn’t complain about it, I wouldn’t have even put the word ‘writer’ and you in the same sentence. At least when thinking about you at all.”

The frankness with which Babin had spoken, coupled with the kind tone his voice carried, completely threw Sarita off. What did he mean? She couldn’t continue the conversation much. She just sat there, shocked, and diverted to small talk:

“Oh, really, umm I guess that’s how life is.”

“Yeah, I mean, hobbies are hobbies. No?

“Yeah.” And so the conversation went as she retreated to the back of her head and watched Sarita and Babin awkwardly talk for 15 minutes or so until Babin asked to ask for the bill, paid for it, and left after giving her a stiff hug. Sarita sat at the table for another 15 minutes until the waiter’s tone became impatient when asking her if everything was alright.

Sarita walked with her head set squarely to the front, without paying attention to anything above and below. She walked to her apartment following a tunnel vision which helped in only one thing: avoiding thought.

Once she reached her apartment. Once she inserted the key into the hole, unlocked the door, turned the handle, and stepped inside, she fell to the floor, fetal, with her legs in her hands, and started sobbing. She should be angry. She should be offended. But in her heart of hearts, Sarita knew that Babin had been right. What right did she have to call herself a writer when she hadn’t written much, much less published anything, and the only space that writing had had in her life had been something to complain about? She didn’t know. She didn’t know at all.

Over the next hour, Sarita had slowly crawled to her bed and snuck inside her blanket. She wanted to sleep but she couldn’t. The comfort of her bed, blanket and pillow felt less like a safe haven and more like she was trying to escape the bitter reality of her own failure. No. Failure was not the right word. Failure is something achieved by those who try. Those who try, fail. What word was there for those who don’t try at all? Can you really call yourself a failure when you haven’t even tried? When you haven’t even attempted? When all you’ve done is dream? Yeah, she wasn’t even good enough to call herself a failure.

Slowly, the sadness gave way to rage. Pure rage. Finally, she felt like she had to direct her anger outward, and of course, who better to turn it towards than the cause of it all? Babin! Who did he think he was? She had simply wanted to vent, and his answer, his opinion, had baffled her, deflated her, and destroyed her all at once. She felt like a balloon untied, and then set on fire. In fact, she felt like a dog. A wet dog. A stray dog. A dog kicked out the house.

She felt like a dog roaming around the street. No, not really. She felt like a dog kicked out the house but still pining outside the door. Yes, that’s how she felt. She felt like a dog sat shivering outside the doors of some mansion. Wait, that has a nice ring to it.

Sarita, as if taken over by some force, flung herself out of her bed, and ran to her desk. She tried to open her laptop, but it was taking too long so, as it was booting up, lunged at the notebook to the left of it and started scribbling. As she wrote the opening lines, the laptop turned on, and so she turned towards it and typed in what she’d scribbled, as well as the lines that followed.

After she’d written down the prose poem. She read it out loud to herself. It sounded a bit awkward but, you know what, it’s alright. She’d written something and that was fine. It was a start.

Feeling a frenzy she hadn’t felt in, to be honest, a year, Sarita continued writing well into the night. Words seemed to flow out of her like water out of a busted open pipe, and instead of putting a pail underneath it, she just soaked in the undertow. She didn’t notice that on her bedside table, her phone was buzzing. It was Babin. He’d sent a text message which read:

“Hey, I think I was a bit too harsh. I didn’t mean to say you’re not a writer or that I don’t think you’re one. Just that I wish you’d write more, you know? Anyway, please let me make it up to you. I’ll buy you a coffee, haha, or better yet, lunch or dinner. You pick the place. My treat. <3”

Sarita wouldn’t see that text message for another 12 hours. In fact, Sarita wouldn’t care for anything aside from the words coming out of her fingertips onto the screen for that time. Sarita was having fun. She was writing. And it was fun. That’s all that mattered. She was having so much fun.