Dear Editor by Bharti Bansal

Dear Editor,

I know nothing about you

And you know nothing about me

But when I say the days pass by like a hurricane I witness from a distance

I only mean that my words are travelling at the speed of light and I might not be able to catch up

But then I remember that there are people in space

Watching the lights on Earth flicker

As if sending signals to this universe is an all-time activity

"Here, here, here"

Do you take the latecomers who are still learning to pronounce their own names

Do you keep their voices folded under the sheets of work you regularly read

Some are louder than mine

But is that why relationships fail too?

Too loud for the other to actually listen

Dear Editor,

My words fail me every single day

So, perhaps, I will learn them better

By which I mean I will try to make money out of my misery

Because poets have hungry hearts, of course, but their hungry stomachs surpass all of it

I will go drink my cold tea

Because our bodies dissolve into themselves quite often

There has to be a reason why they are mostly water

We all are escaping ourselves

We all end up in the same body again and again and again

---

“The pieces were considered trash by me because I believe they lack a certain voice. Voice which is firm and concrete and says exactly how I feel. These pieces have been rejected so many times and now I believe they don't belong anywhere except the notes in my phone. I think even though they can be crafted well, there will always be a certain lacking in how they come out in the world and speak for themselves. Editors was written because of the continuous rejections I have faced from literary magazines and how it has affected my sense of self esteem.”

Bharti is a resident of India currently living in small state of Himachal Pradesh. She loves cats and currently owns a dog named jugnu that was rescued. She wants to own a cat farm someday.