The Poem That Cannot Be Owned Poem by Kumar Sen

A poem begins before you notice it
and lingers after you have turned away

It is not a container
It does not wait for your understanding
It moves like air through a cracked window
like footsteps across a floor no one remembers

Every line is a choice you did not make
Every word a witness to your absence
Every pause a moment stolen from silence

Do not ask it to explain
Do not ask it to comfort
Do not ask it to obey

The poem grows where you do not look
It lives in the spaces you skip
It speaks in the voice of the mind before thought
and the heart before naming

Read it
Then step back
Then read it again
Not to capture it
Not to pin it down
Not to master it

But to remember
That poetry is the place where meaning flees
and still, you chase it
and still, it touches you
and still, it insists
that you are not the owner
but the witness
and that witness
is everything the poem ever wanted