Skip to main content

On An Aftermath

After more years than I remember
I am strung approximately between
the deepest pain and love -for you.

I make a make-shift home
for you in my heart
way before its time
knowing I should not.

Your lips brushed against my skin
rekindling dead desire,
turning me parched for love again.

But I do because you insist
on having the comfort of home
when just passing by
enjoying the view.

Your words and voice fade
you leave - make no promise
to come closer
or even return
- all of which I crave
no less or more than the other.

My hopes are churned frothy
not ready to burst yet - don't ask for death.

Knowing that at dawn you
will be gone - forever.

Tell me instead that you have loved and hurt
for me as much or more - as I have done for you.

Tell me that you were waiting for heavens
to make the sign that I was the one for you.

Tell me anything, but don't leave yet - stay.

I love you for the best reason possible - that
for no reason at all. For no promise made, for no
perfection, nothing offered, nothing received.

I love you with the raw incandescence that
transcends logic and reason.

In that my love is purely that - love.

I am at time happy to be with another.
Yet after a while, the heart turns heavy with
with the brooding silence of your absence.

Men like you maul me time over time
and yet I do not learn
that I deserve to be treated
different,

As I long so much to hear your voice again,
I think I know how the end might come -
your desire to leave your mark on my life
may turn stronger than mine - don't do it.

I will cherish you so much more if you stay

Don't tell me when I bring you news of my
happiness that you waited to say goodbye
until I was ready to bear your loss.

Tell me you are leaving.

handled gentler
be walked through
friendship and then love
at leisurely pace

Tell me now if you must - pain will mingle
with pain until one and indistinguishable.

I go through serial
emotional rape
because
the physical me
is out of reach.

Comments

DilettanteMoi said…
raw pain.. that is what I feel!! hope you/she is not as hurt as the poem sounds! i will read it again, this time not in a hurry to get to the end!! I like endings.. but alas! real life has no endings... only beginnings.. there is only one true ending, no?
Sumita said…
Woah!!!

Some poem this......!!!!

sometimes i think if more and more people think love should be relegated to contracts transactions and objective calculations...
as "love for no reason at all" seems to be met with more suspicion than desire...
Its probably time to lock the heart away and walk forward..
Jiva | 06.28.05 - 10:05 am | #

Popular posts from this blog

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...