Apr 13, 20233 min read

Celebrating Friendship at The Poetic Heart

I've probably already mentioned this here a few times (or maybe too many times!), but my love for poetry began at a very young age. I can still remember penning my first poem at around six years old. Although granted at the time I thought a poem was just a collection of random facts put together, so it sounded a bit like 'There are 7 colors in the rainbow, the sky is blue, I am 6 years old,' and so on and on and on on (literally, it was like 3 pages of random facts I knew at the time!).

As the years went by I began to slowly understand what a poem really was. This was largely thanks to the awesome English teachers at secondary school. One day in our sweaty, tired and hormonal 10th-grade English classroom, our teacher instructed us to pen poems about friendship for our next assignment. And so that's what I did. I wrote a heartfelt piece about my best friend at the time, who just so happens to still be my best friend today - 8 years on!

Unbeknownst to me, while correcting our assignments, my English teacher decided to submit my poem for consideration at UAE's annual Poetic Heart symposium. The Poetic Heart is an annual poetry symposium that began in 2012. It is the product of a soulful collaboration between SGI-Gulf and Dubai Knowledge Village. This stunning event has managed to bring together over 73 international poets, 21 notable musicians and 159 school students.

To my surprise and absolute delight, my English teacher informed me that my poem about friendship had been selected out of hundreds of student submissions to be performed at The Poetic Heart that year (link to my page on their site). I was nervous, flustered and elated all at once. I still hadn't gotten over my stage fright at the time, so the prospect of going up on stage in front of a huge auditorium was more than daunting.

When the day finally came, I was happy to learn that the entire English class would be accompanying me to the venue to support me. Having all my close friends with me made the bus ride to the venue a little less nerve-wracking. When I was called upon to approach the stage and recite my poem, my legs were shaking. Some sort of autopilot mode in me just switched on at that moment, and I can't even really remember reading my piece out loud. My classmates all said I did a fantastic job, but I really cannot recall much of it owing to how nervous I was.

What I do remember, however, in vivid detail, was the bus ride back home. Our teacher stopped at a Mcdonald's and asked us to get whatever we wanted, on her! As a bunch of hungry teen young-ish adults, we jumped at the chance. I remember getting the soft serve with strawberry sauce - something about scarfing it down in a musty old bus with your buddies just made it taste better than a Michelin star meal.

That's enough of my backstory now - here's the piece that I wrote to celebrate the bond between my best friend and I:

Friendship

If I could start

All over again,

I wouldn’t.

I’d keep it right here.

I don’t want to revisit the past,

I just want to be here.

I don’t want to relive the fights and quarrels or days of cold stares,

I just want to be here.

No, actually, I don’t just want to be here,

I want us to be here,