The Poet

By Constanza Baeza Valdenegro

She believed in poetry. Her sensitive soul found shelter among verses and stanzas. When she was younger, the language of poetry seemed to be hard to understand, an adult adventure of future melancholy. She was inclined towards prose, because an accurate description of reality made her aware of the world around her, the same world she couldn’t see as she was living in her universe of shyness. However, in the middle of slow hours of quadratic equations and tedious homework, she found herself writing verses that got lost among school notebooks and bus tickets. When she became a twenty-something and adulthood brought new experiences and pains, she took the road of poetry. She put aside Madame Bovary’s expectations of unforgettable romance and Jules Verne’s anticipations, and enjoyed the company of the most delicate verses.

When she was going to turn thirty, the Poet came along.

An online conversation, a trick from the wireless space, two stars in the same path. Thousands of kilometres and six hours separated them, but the internet made them meet at some point in time. He told her he was a poet. Emotions started to run in her heart. You don’t meet a poet every day. She was flattered because the universe had chosen her to talk to a poet.

The Poet had won a prize in his country. A young talent was recognised among his fellow poets. There was a splendid future for him. Publishing, more prizes, a loyal readership, admiration, maybe translation? She googled him, looking for some poems. There were a couple of works online, but the instant translation wasn’t helpful, and she couldn’t read his poems. But she was excited. He had a poetic past. There was a book among those memories. A thin book of poetry, a piece of art born on his mind, the best way to get to know him.

There was some disaffection in the Poet’s words when he talked about his experience as a man of poetry. He didn’t sound excited or nostalgic about those times. It looked like a closed chapter in his life. He rarely wrote, and many copies of his book were forgotten in his shelves, abandoned to dust and their author’s indifference.

Their conversations lasted for hours. Midnight and sunset were parallel realities, but they were too busy building a beautiful friendship and weren’t aware of the changes of the clock. They had their own language, the one that kindred spirits use to recognise each other. Every little, unimportant coincidence seemed to confirm that they were meant to be together.

Winter left her country, spring arrived with floral scandal, and she realised she was in love with the Poet. She never tried to fight that feeling. Her dreamy soul accepted those emotions with shyness and tenderness. Her love. Her dreams. Her illusions. Everything was a child of her sweet and romantic nature. The unbearable distance couldn’t stop her from dreaming on.

But she didn’t know that some poets are scared of love.

She wasn’t very poetic when she told him about her love. Just ordinary words, nothing special, no need to use forgotten and complicated words from past times. She chose the words with tenderness because she didn’t want to lose all the quietness built around her feelings. In a naïve act, she added some songs, thinking that those beautiful pieces of music would help him understand what was happening in her heart.

But his reaction wasn’t poetic at all.

The Poet read her sweet message. She waited for her reply, minutes, hours, days. Her heart knew the answer to such behavior, but accepting reality would have been painful. She wanted to believe that he was just scared of his feelings. But that silence, that wordless action meant just one thing: that the Poet didn’t love her.

The Poet went away. The word player, the creator of verse-shaped beauty, the son of the Muses, the young talent chose silence as an answer. A poet became silent, in an unbelievable movement. He never talked to her again. She thought he was punishing her for the big mistake of loving him, a forbidden feeling between them, an untold rule. Poets only break people’s hearts when their words are soulful. But no one expects a poet to break a girl’s heart with silence. Was he an actual poet? They taught us that poetry is about feelings. Did he have feelings at all?

She cried. All the sweetness he gave her was just a distant memory, a misty thought. Her eyes shed tears every night, when the moon appeared as a queen in the dark sky, indifferent and pale. But that was poetry: a girl lying on her bed, crying for love, with the moon and the stars being witness of her pain. She couldn’t find the answers to explain his silence. All she got was more pain. Anguish was the child of that experience.

When she dried her tears, she started to write again. A broken heart always finds consolation in art. Her hand danced on the notebook with grace. Deleted verses, unfinished stanzas, solitary words, everything was a work of her own sorrows. It was her answer to the Poet’s silence. Her broken heart just dictated her sad verses. Because sadness was all he left in her world. She never was the same.

She sent those sad poems to magazines. Her soul was in every word. Her shy nature was reluctant to show the world what she had written, but poetry has to be shared, discussed, admired, read, she said.

One of those poems, a creation from her sorrow, was published on a magazine. She sent the Poet a message with the link of the post. And the Poet read the message.

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Constanza Baeza Valdenegro was born in 1985. She lives in the Chilean countryside. She likes languages, flavoured tea and knowledge.