What rhymes with mirth” is a story told in verse form. It’s one of my never-ending works in progress. Verse is such a flexible form and every time I think about this project, I am overwhelmed by the different directions I can take this story. I am not a very good poet, that might be owing to the fact that I don’t write a lot of poetry pieces. Poetry is loose and abstract in a way that I have never felt about fiction. Because fiction has a solid structure. I know there are million different story structures out there but when you think about it, stories are all about actions and their consequences, right?! But there are no such defining factors for poetry. It’s like an abstract painting in that way.

And telling a story in verse form is interesting because I take the straight forward narrative of fiction and the loose structure of poetry and merge them together. And the result is a weird literary amalgamation. And who doesn’t like weird, unusual pieces of literature? I personally LOVE them.

Initially, the story was going to be about a girl who is working as a corporate content writer and she hates her job. She is depressed and sleep-deprived. But one day, this word ‘mirth’ is stuck in her head. She is sitting in a meeting, and she is sleepy as hell, but she can’t seem to take this word out of her head. And as she is thinking about other words which rhyme with this word ‘mirth'(hence the title), memories of her lazy teenage summers crowd her mind.

I wrote these 3 stanzas many months ago. But every time I think about this project and the protagonist, I always feel like there’s more to her than just being a sleep-deprived employee. And I decided to give an arc to this character and write a sequel of sorts. Just a few more stanzas in which I’ll get to explore her relationship with her mother and the other aspects of her life.

Let’s see how it goes. I am so excited for this project.

– Semmozhi